IPS 3521 

E553 
|P6 
1919 
ICopy 1 



7 







POEMS 



BY 

SARA BEAUMONT KENNEDY 

Author of "One Wish" 




THE CAMEO PRESS AND PUBLISHING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 

NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN 



Copyright, 1919, by the author 
Sara Beaumont Kennedy 



Printed in the United States of America 
All rights reserved 



OOPYRIGHT OfFm^ 
Ui 29 »29 



1919 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 

LANCASTER, PA. 



*A) 



TO 

MRS. AUGUSTA LAMAR HEISKELL 

WHOSE BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP AND UNFAILING 

OPTIMISM MADE THIS BOOK A POSSIBILITY 

IT IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 

Fags 

Alien of The Centuries 7 

AUenby 105 

Answer, The 104 

An Old Valentine 16 

April Days ........ 18 

At The Kik-u-Cha 147 

Autumn ......... 87 

Building Anew ....... 48 

Call to Prayer, The 129 

Call to the Colors, The 98 

Canst Thou Forget 20 

Car and Cart 149 

Carmen's Rose ....... 26 

Charity 46 

Chimney Tops ....... 41 

Clancey at Vimy Ridge 97 

Codicil to June . 150 

Columbia's Toll 93 

Coming and Going, The . . . . . .79 

Confucius to Christ ....... 63 

Country Road, The 24 

Creepers, The ....... 54 

Culprits 138 

Cup, The 45 

Day by Day 36 

Dawn o' The Day .46 

Death 56 

Dream Road, The ....... 1 

Easter ......... 86 

Evolution of The Stocking 151 

Ex Tenebris 35 

Flag in The Church, The 107 

Fleur-de-Lis 143 

V 



Fag» 

Flying 22 

Flying South 52 

For He Was Mary's Son 84 

Forgiveness ........ 39 

Forty Days 156 

Fragments ........ S7 

Free Agents 77 

Going to France . . . . . . .126 

Goodbye Road . . ... . • .35 

Goodbye Summer .89 

Goodbye Sweethearts 124 

Good Wishes 108 

Great Souls 44 

Guynemer . . . . . . . .118 

Heart o' The World 125 

Heredity 76 

High Tide 58 

In April Days . . 11 

In France 109 

Indian Summer . . . . . . .12 

In Mexico ........ 128 

Interned 99 

Iscariot 36 

Jack o' Lantern ....... 8 

King, The 91 

Knitters, The 134 

Krieg 1st Krieg 110 

La Fayette, We Have Come 128 

Lagniappe ........ 51 

Last Patter an. The ....... 4 

Le Chemin Des Dames . . . . . .140 

Left Behind 10 

Let Us Pray 135 

Lost Land, The 21 

Lost Train, The 23 

Love's Game ........ 146 

Low Tide 59 

May Day 152 

May Time 127 

vi 



Madame Catherine Breshkovskaya 

Manana . 

Manumission 

Marys at The Cross 

Mistletoe . 

Mothers of Men 

My Refuge 

No Man's Land 

October 

Old Calendar . 

Old Letters 

Open Road, The 

Open Your Door 

Our Flag . 

Our Thanks . 

Out of The Past 

Page, The Finished 

Perfection 

Pilgrim Thoughts 

Power's Greek Slave 

Prayer Rug, The 

Price of Paradise 

Queen of Songs 

Rain, The 

Raison D'Etre . 

Recompense 

Red Cross, The 

Reincarnation . 

Roses 

Runaways 

Scuppernong Wine 

Sea Gulls 

Second Samuel 

Seekers, The . 

Self-Conquest . 

Service Flag, The 

Ship Wrecked . 

Ships That Sail 



Page 
111 

3 

59 

100 

144 

141 

153 

112 

19 

78 

32 

55 

60 

92 

137 

90 

81 

6 

40 

15 

26 

154 

136 

13 

29 

61 

113 

72 

29 

9 

31 

40 

64 

74 

50 

95 

43 

139 



Vll 



Ships at Sea . 

Somewhere in France 

Song 

Song and Singer 

Sparking Plug, The 

Springtime 

Star Over The Trench, The 

Story Hour, The 

Soul of Germany, The 

Soulful Question, A 

Stuff of Dreams 

Sweetheart Knitters 

Sweet o' The Day 

Thanksgiving 

That Day of Days 

That Middle Cross 

Their Gifts 

Thief, The 

Those Far Oif Graves 

Tomorrow 

To Our Soldiers 

Transformation 

Two Who Prayed 

Unbeaten 

Venus 

Vignettes 

Visions 

Wanderlust 

War Babies 

When The Bugles Blow 

When Women Voted First 

Wild Oats 

Wishing . 

With Little Boy Blue 

Working for The Red Cross 

Written Scroll, The . 



Page 

65 

103 

90 

30 

159 

5 

119 

62 

117 

155 

156 

102 

1 

120 

133 

85 

83 

67 

121 

49 

96 

131 

53 

68 

14 

68 

34 

70 

122 

130 

157 

74 

145 

71 

115 

82 



Vlll 



POEMS 



SWEET O' THE DAY 

THE lengthening shadows seek the backward trails. 
The birds, on silken, silent wings 
That leave no clue, 
Drift by. The hill tops shimmer pale with gold, 
And, higher still, a slender crescent sails 
Like phantom of a vanished world, 
And all is hushed and all is still — 
Dusk o' the day, dear heart. 

Dusk o' the day — and you. 

A sudden rush of stars beyond the tangled wood, 
A slowing down of all the surge of sound 
That noontide knew. 
A homeward-wending road that leaves behind 
The lairs of fret and all their trouble-brood 

And leads where burns your window light ; 
And all is peace and all is love — 
Sweet o' the day, dear heart, 

Sweet o' the day — and you ! 



THE DREAM ROAD 

WHERE does it run, the road to my Dreams.? 
Oh, ever and ever so far. 
Where the meadows meet and the flowers are sweet. 
And on to a silver star. 

1 



There's never a hill it does not climb 

To catch at the purple mist, 
And never a vale where the twilights fail 

Where it has not held a tryst. 

The road to my Dreams is a gypsy trail 

With a campfire under the sky, 
And the patteran laid, in shadow and shade. 

Lest One should pass me by. 

The road to my Dreams ? 'Tis a city street 
Where, out in the surging throng, 

I glimpse a face with a luring grace 
And the day is set to a song ! 

Oh, the paths of the whole wide world are yours. 
O'er mountains and valleys and streams. 

But you may not dare to follow where 
I travel to reach my Dreams. 

For at every bend of the Wander-Way 

I set up a trespass sign. 
And I hold the road by the royal code 

That what I have staked is mine ! 



MANANA 

NOT today : some other time, 
Some misty morn or golden noon, 
Or dusk-fall when the roses swoon. 
Sometime hours must be reckoned chime on chime 
But not today — 

Manana. 

Not today : let's drift awhile ; 

Why hurry in life's fretful scheme? 
Let's dream as lotus-eaters dream. 
Sometime we must press onward many a mile. 
But not today — 

Manana. 

Not today : let's go to sleep 

And say : " The dawn's not breaking yet, 
The stars still shine," and so forget. 
Sometime we must sad vigils keep, 
But not today — 

Manana. 

Manana — that soft Mexic word. 

Dreamful and fraught with mystery. 
Has spelled full many a destiny. 
Sometime hearts may be thrilled and stirred. 
But not today — 

Manana. 



THE LAST PATTERAN'' 

I TREAD the old paths where we walked 
So many seasons, side by side, 
And laughed to see the golden days 
In bloomy sheaf or snowy maze 

Glide noiselessly, as shadows glide. 

I know each turning of the road. 

Each little wilding glen and glade — 
Where poppies swoon, where brown leaves drift, 
Where scarlet woodbine trumpets sift, 
Where phantom thistles masquerade. 

On every singing mile you set 

Some sign that shall forever stay. 

And though, through all the weary years 

I walk alone and blind with tears, 
I shall not miss the way. 

And as you marked that old-time trail, 

I know, when death calls from a-far, 

That somewhere, somehow I shall see 

You've laid love's patteran for me 
From star to voiceless star. 

And I shall follow where you passed, 

Fearless, as in the long-ago ; 
And though all other eyes than mine 
Shall miss each tender, secret sign, 

I shall not fail — I'll know, I'll know. 

Gypsy trail mark. 



SPRINGTIME 

THE willows glow gold in the sunlight, 
The robins, a-wing, 
Spill out on the crystalline ether 

The lyric of spring. 
There's a dream in the wind as it passes, 

A spell in the haze, 
For the year has come back to the season 
Of do-nothing days. 

The grass is shot white with sweet clover 

Like foam of green seas. 
Where glean the freebooters of pillage — 

The vagabond bees. 
There's a beckon for me in the shadows 

That ripple the plain, 
A lure in the hide-and-seek sunshine, 

A call in the rain. 

And in fancy I'm out on the hilltops. 

All care left behind. 
Answering the dare that is wafted 

From gypsying wind ; 
Or, prone on my back in the clover 

Of meadow-sweet ways 
I lie — just a loafer and dreamer 

These do-nothing days. 



PERFECTION 

FOR me one perfect flower that blows 
In wide-eyed radiance to the mom, 
One fragrant, golden-hearted rose; 
This— 
And what care I for stinging thorn? 

For me one song, one vibrant cry 

From heart to heart with lark-clear note, 

One anthem, falling to a lullaby ; 
This— 
Then folded wing and songless throat. 

For me one limpid glass brimmed high 
And effervescing like a crystal rhyme. 

Yea, one full cup of bubbling ecstacy ; 
This— 
And dregs of memory for all time. 

For me one day of throbbing change 
Where hope runs eager, out of breath. 

One wide-winged flight, one free, far range. 
This— 
Then life's twin jewel, dim-eyed Death! 



ALIEN OF THE CENTURIES 

IN Paris — in the Louvre where come 
The devotees to genius' shrine, 
Where is foregathered, piece by piece, 
The art that man counts half divine — 
You hold your court. 
Impassive alien, you look down 

Upon your worshippers, and give no sign, 
Venus de Milo ! 

Whose hope you were, whose dream fulfilled 

No living man has known ; 
What scenes you shared in that dim age 
Ere Melos was to brown sand blown 
We may not say. 
Flotsam from some far century 

The world's heart claims you for its own, 
Venus de Milo. 

Claims you, although it cannot read 

The cryptic scroll of vague unrest. 
Nor wake the soul the sculptor hid 
Deep in that pallid, pulseless breast; 
For mighty love 
That wrought you from the shapeless block 
Your immortality confessed, 
Venus de Milo. 

O'er Melos Isle the winds still blow, 
gtil} runs the tide with azure gleams, 
7 



The buried city sleeps and sleeps 
Just as you see it in your dreams 
Here in the Louvre. 
The clouds like golden chariots drift, 
And in their wake a sea bird screams, 
Venus de Milo. 



JACK O'LANTERNS 

OUT of the lush of the lowlands 
Where the dark lies cool and dank 
It comes — 

And dips and veers, and re-appears 
Like a vagrant ghost or a spirit lost — 
The jack o' lantern's flame. 

And we? — 

We follow — follow — follow 
Far out through the jagged night 
The beck of its drifting light, 
And come at last in the faint first dawn 
To a melting mist with the glamour gone 
And the spell of its magic lost. 

Out of the glooms and the shadows 

That curtain the cycles of time 
They come — 

And slip away, the dreams astray 
That tempt our souls to gleaming goals 
On star-crowned heights. 
8 



And we? — 

We follow — follow — follow 

In eager, endless quest 

The lure of a mad unrest ; 
And come at last where the life lines part 
With empty hands and an empty heart, 

And the mock of a memory ! 



RUNAWAYS 

MAY o' the year ! and we hate the grime 
Of the narrow asphalt street. 
For somewhere we know the roses blow 

And the gypsy winds run fleet. 
May o' the year, and the wanderlust 

Catches the heart in its snare. 
And we hit the trail with a pilgrim's hail 
For the Land of Any Old Where. 

What matters or smooth or rough the road 

So into the wilds it go? 
When the day began the pipes of Pan 

Played soft in the woods below. 
And we caught the step and tracked him far 

To his reedy river lair, 
For his silvery flute it never is mute 

In the Land of Any Old Where. 
2 9 



May o' the year, and any old where 

Away from the city's reach — 
On the windswept hill where the stars stand still, 

Or racing the wave-wet beach ; 
Filling our souls with the soul of the rose, 

Laughing at sorrow and care. 
With a shepherd's crook and a well-thumbed book 

On the road to Any Old Where ! 



LEFT BEHIND 

TWO set out in the amethyst dawning 
Following ever the wake of the sun. 
Eager with hope for the journey before them. 
Laughing at thought of summits unwon. 

Steep grew the path, but they sang as they journeyed; 

Grief seemed a phantom, disaster a wraith. 
Lightly they counted the toil and the burden, 

Hand clasping hand in the fullness of faith. 

But sudden, far up where stones were the sharpest 
One pressed on before and passed out of sight. 

Lost in the shrouding white mist of the mountain. 
And one was alone in the on-coming night — 

Alone, and the summit yet dim in the distance, 
Alone, and the pathway grown rugged and bare, 

Calling and hearkening, and getting no answer. 
Stumbling and falling — and no one to care. 

10 



Two set out in the amethyst dawning 
Dreaming of love that was never to fail ; 

One was caught up to its radiant fruition, 
One left behind on the desolate trail. 



IN APRIL DAYS 

(KATHERINE— APRIL 17) 

IN April days she came to live with us ; 
So pure her heart, so calm her eyes 
It seemed she had not lost the angel touch 
That sped her baby feet from Paradise. 

And through the Aprils of her fair young life. 

Which slipped on time's slim thread like golden beads. 

She kept the faith sublime of perfect truth — 
The holiest of all the written creeds. 

In April days she has gone back to God, 

(Oh, are his mandates always just and wise!) — 

Not April lilies whiter than her soul, 

Not stars more steadfast than her brave, calm eyes ! 



11 



INDIAN SUMMER 

A WHIP of mist across the silver dawn, 
At eventide a purple haze 
Shot full of glinting fire ; 
And on the everlasting hills, 

Where runs the road of Heart's Desire, 
The Bob-white's call of love 
Through vagrant ways. 

Stirred by the wind the tawny sedge grass swings 
In waves that never touch a shore 
Nor break in foam ; 
And o'er their windy wastes, on wings of flame, 
The scarlet tanager flits home — 
A voiceless specter of the spring 
And its sweet lore. 

The daisies of St. Michael crest the hedge 
Where droops the faded goldenrod — - 
A miser's rifled dream ; 
And in the heart that erst was reft of hope 
A brooding peace that reigns supreme. 
And in the soul a sense 
Of kinship unto God. 



12 



RAIN 

KEEP your calm days with azure skies 
And shadows playing hide-and-seek 
From dawn to dusk, and gold-of-Ophir sun 
Crowning the far-off mountain peak ; 
Keep these for yours — 
Give me the rain ! 

Give me the days gray like the cowl 

That hides a monk's pale, musing face. 
No glint of blue or east or west, 
No break within the somber space. 
But blur instead 

Of blown, white rain. 

For in the sun I am a part 

Of hfe with all its heave and beat, 
Its two-fold purpose — love and hate — 
Its destiny so swift and sweet ; 
But in the rain 
I am alone. 

Alone, to hear the far, clear call 

Wind-whispered from the voiceless past, 
Alone with my own hidden self 

To build new dreams and hold them fast- 
To sing my heart 
Out with the rain. 



13 



VENUS 

A DOWN the purple west it slips 
A splendid silver star 
To human eyes ; in verity 

My Lady Venus' love-lit car 
Through leagues on leagues of mystic space 
Gone speeding far. 

We may not see the doves that draw 

The chariot of the air, 
We may not glimpse the roses red 

That crown her wind-blown hair — 
We only know by subtle sense 

That she is there. 

By subtle sense we catch the lure 

Of half averted eyes, 
And like a spell upon the heart 

The perfume of her bosom lies 
As Joy rides far and free with her 
Across the skies. 

The twittering sparrows of her train 

Are but as jeweled dust 
Flung backward from the chariot wheels 

In many a wind-blown gust — 
We only know that follow her 

Aye, follow her we must. 

14 



For sorceries of the summer night 

The souls of men unbar 
When Venus draws the whole world's heart 

At wheels of her bright car — 
The chariot that our eyes behold 

And call the Evening Star. 



POWER'S GREEK SLAVE 

WITHIN the vaulted rooms where soft lights fell 
I passed them by — each gilded frame where shone 
A pictured face, sea scene or shaded wood 
From master brush ; and so at last I stood 
Within a silent niche, shut off alone, 
Before that wonder wrought from Parian stone — 
The Greek Slave in her pallid solitude. 
Her haunting eyes looked through my every mood ; 
And there I questioned with myself in muttered tone 
Her story sad and strange — ^her unknown life 
Ere galling chains had bitten to the blood 
The supple, rounded wrists of her. 

Came she 
From where o'er Thessaly the white-clouds go? 
Did Attic stars her first awakening see ? 
Or did the blue Laconian sky bend low. 
So low, to smile into her eyes it left 
A purple shadow 'neath the lids of snow ? 

15 



What destiny had marked her for its own 

In that dim land of mystery and tears ? 

Did royal purple veil those polished limbs, 

Or humble hovel hold her first young years? 

Was she a vestal, bound by vows of fate 

To maiden chastity and pure esteem? 

Or yet — or yet, like some incarnate dream 

Of hero-worth, was there in that lost state 

Whence she was snatched by lustful hands of hate. 

One who had won her soul in love supreme. 

While human eyes gloat o'er her new estate 

Grieves she, in this white silence, for her home 

And for her lover's tender kiss ? 

Vain quest. 

Vain longing to unwind the tangled skein 1 

Those marble lips, as pale as sea-beat foam. 

Their secret keep through all of Time's unrest. 

The careless world that cons her beauty o'er 

Goes on its thoughtless way, nor e'er has guessed 

What stinging, martyr thorns were on her temples pressed. 



AN OLD VALENTINE 

UP in the attic I found it. 
In the cedar-scented chest. 
This quaint, old-fashioned valentine 

To my great-great aunt addressed. 
Cupids and arrows and verses 

Bound by a tinsel chain. 
And under a blood-red rose the line : 
" Sweetheart, Belinda Jane ! " 
16 



Your portrait's there in the parlor, 

In a queer short-waisted gown 
And tortoiseshell comb that held your hair 

Like a carven, royal crown 
But, oh, the Lurlei lure of the eyes 

That tempt with a mock disdain, 
And oh, the smile of ripe, red lips, 

" Sweetheart, Belinda Jane ! " 

Lover and maiden are sleeping 

In the years' unbroken trance, 
And here in this valentine I find 

The ghost of their old romance. 
There's no rustle of silken garments. 

No faintest sigh's refrain. 
But I feel your unseen presence, 

" Sweetheart, Belinda Jane." 

Are you laughing there in the shadows. 

You with your coquetry creed.? 
He loved you truly, Belinda ; 

'Tis written where all may read ; 
But the hearts of the painted roses 

That never knew wind or rain. 
Hold ever your untold secret, 

" Sweetheart, Belinda Jane." 

What was the message you sent him 
On that long dead winter's day ? 

Did your teasing end in loving? 

Did you break his heart with " nay " ^ 

17 



Ah, this valentine is partial, 

Its witness is all in vain 
Since it gives no clue to your answer, 

" Sweetheart, Belinda Jane." 



APRIL DAYS 

THESE are the days when we would be alone. 
These soft, gray days with margins blue 
Where glinting sunlight sifted through 
As ragged clouds aside were blown. 

There is a mystery in the greening sod, 
A faint suggestion in the stir 
Of growing grass and in the whir 

Of silken wings that whisper : " God." 

And through the silence there come back again 
The faded memories of the past 
Washed clean of blotting tears at last — 

Revivified — shrived of their pain. 

They walk beside us through the flecks of sun 
Or white, blown rain of April days — 
These old, old dreams, and softly raise 

The shielding curtain that the years have spun. 

And these are all the company we need. 
They bring to us, like lost caress. 
The weird, sweet peace of loneliness 

And teach us love's forgotten creed. 
18 



OCTOBER 

OCTOBER— and the parting of the ways ! 
The backward path runs to the heart of June 
And still is vocal with unspoken rune 

Of greening sod and fruited field. 
We hear it yet in faint recessional 
As moves the year to its confessional 
Close to the altar steps of God. 

The trail ahead runs down the glowing way 
That autumn's torch has fired. And pilgrim lure 
Of lifted pack and staff that's strong and sure 

Lurks at each turn along the road, 
And we walk forth beneath the paling skies 
With searching vision and far-seeing eyes 

And ask if we have found the end. 

High priestess, robed and crowned, October stands. 
Her breasts gold-girdled and her white arms bare. 
And makes burnt sacrifice in which we share. 

For every " burning bush " along the hedge 
Is wayside altar, flaming to the skies. 
And there we offer, with uplifted eyes. 

Oblation of our baser selves — 
And burn the dross to incense of the soul. 



19 



CANST THOU FORGET? 

(SONG) 

AMID the crowd we met today, 
We passed and spake no word, 
But like a light within my heart 
A hidden memory stirred — 
Thoughts of a day 
Now far away ; 
O Love, hast thou forgot, 

Forgot? 
O Love, hast thou forgot? 

The primrose path sloped to the rocks, 

Beyond were beach and sea ; 

Ye drifting tides, ye could not snatch 

My dream of joy from me. 

Our words were soft. 

Our lips met oft ; 

O Love, canst thou forget, 

Forget — 
O Love, canst thou forget? 



20 



THE LOST LAND 

I HEARD them once — the blue birds' call, 
The throstle's whistled tune, 
And saw, a-down a winding lane, 
Flecked with the sun or gemmed with rain. 
The April's floral rune. 

Would I could find it once again. 

That lane with blossoms gay ; 
For me 'twould mark the backward trail 
To that lost realm where shadows fail. 

The land of Yesterday. 

Each time the spring comes o'er the hills 

I follow in her lead 
And seek again that dear, lost land 
Where Love and I walked hand in hand 

And learned life's golden creed. 

But down the barren, world-long leagues 

That meet my aching gaze 
No song bird calls or blossom peers — 
The flotsam of the shriven years 

Drifts with the vanished days. 



21 



A 



FLYING 

H, heart of mine, if I could but fly 
Up under the cup of the bending sky, 
And drift and drive and soar and dip 
Like a winged thing in a great air ship, 

I know what I would do. 



I'd speed to the east o'er the cobalt blue 

And find the gap where the day breaks through. 

And 'neath Aurora's golden wand 

I'd peep to see what lay beyond 

That dim, uncharted space. flH 

Then I'd tack away o'er the night's black bars 
And the story learn of sentinel stars ; 

And, passing by in a splendid gale. 

The surly Man-in-the-Moon I'd hail 
As an old, familiar friend. 

In the veering winds where the pale mists crowd 
I'd bump right into the rose-hued cloud 

On which the cherubs lean to see 

The world and its far mystery — 
The cherubs the artists love. 

And the trophies I'd bring from my daring flight.? 
A ribbon of mist where the day breaks white. 

The Moon-Man's name — an unknown thing — 

A feather plucked from a seraph's wing. 
And the secrets of all the skies. 



THE LOST TRAIL 

TODAY I took the trail again, 
The road you journeyed oft with me 
When sands of time were golden grain 

And every hour was ecstasy — 
Lured by the ever-beckoning hand 
Of Hope that will not understand 
Fate's dread finality and brand, 
I took the trail to Arcady. 

I knew each foot-worn mile that ran 
From wild-rose hedge to singing sea, 

Where hawthorn set its milk-white ban, 
A tryst for lovers' constancy — 

Where Bobolinks of Laughter built. 

Where music of the winds was spilt 

Around the castles, rose and gilt, 
That reared their domes in Arcady. 

For Joy's divining rod I bore 

A Lily white with purity, 
And paused, as oft we'd paused of yore. 

Just where the path dips o'er the lea 
To lift and hear a sea-shell sing, 
Or watch the Blue-birds on the wing 
Call softly down arcades of spring 

That opened into Arcady. 

I knew, and yet — I missed the way ! 
For gray the fog crept from the sea ; 



Not e'en the Bobolinks were gay, 

And shells had lost their minstrelsy. 
And all my heart cried out for you, 
For, ah, my sweet, at last I knew 
Alone, one may not find the clew 
Where runs the road to Arcady ! 



THE COUNTRY ROAD 

WHITE in the sunshine, gray in the shade, 
Like an out-spun thread of fate, 
It cleaves the meadows and slips away 

Where the hills in ambush wait. 
Mounting the slopes with a sure up-lift. 

Dipping to valleys below. 
And where it begins and where is the end 
There's never an eye may know. 

Beside it straggles an age-gray fence 

With gaps for the cows to pass. 
At the powdered hem wild violets bind 

The dust to the emerald grass. 
Above, like weaving shuttles a-wing 

The wrens and the blue-birds fly. 
And higher still the vultures sail. 

Black specks in the azure sky. 

Here the bare-foot boys go racing past, 
The dust flung back like foam ; 

There the slow-hoofed oxen, heads a-swing. 
Draw the hay-sweet wagons home. 






Where halts the trail at the clear, brown brook 

A way-farer stops to rest, 
While high on the hills, free-reined and fleet, 

A horseman rides on his quest. 

Ah, hither and thither the travelers go, 

Together or else alone, 
Drifting away to haunts unseen 

Like leaves in a tempest blown — 
Meeting and passing as shadows cross 

Or clouds a-sail in the sun, 
Some with the tryst of life far spent. 

Some with it just begun. 

A truant wind, like a troubadour, 

Sings an untranslated song 
As it follows the unf orgotten track 

The night and the whole day long. 
Or does it echo, that wordless sigh. 

The mingled laughter and tears 
Of the countless hosts who have trod that way 

Through the dusk of the yester-years ? 

For the long, lone road that stretches away — 

A backward and onward line — 
Must end somewhere out under the stars 

In a hut or a gilded shrine ; 
But whither it leads in its ceaseless flow 

The pilgrims only may see — 
Or to the woe of the great, sad world. 

Or straight into Arcady ! 
3 ^5 



CARMEN'S ROSE 

KISSED and tossed to her lover 
From the dusk of her midnight hair, 
She knew the touch of her laughing hps 
Was a never-ending snare. 

Rose of a hundred legends 

In your velvet petals curled, 
Forever unfading and fragrant 

You are held to the heart of the world. 

Born of the sunshine of loving, 

Dyed deep with the passions of years, 

Lang'rous with breath of desire, 
Dew-wet with glisten of tears — 

Type for all ages to come 

Of love and of jealousy's hate. 

Your perfume is life's reddest wine. 
Quaffed deep from beakers of fate. 



THE PRAYER RUG 

AS supple as a tiger's skin 
With wine hues and with ochre blent. 
It lies upon my polished floor — 

Four square feet of the Orient. 
No more than that, yet space enough 



On which to build a wonder-dream 
Of that far town which, half asleep 
And half a myth, 
Lies 'neath the crescent's golden gleam. 

I see Bokhara's minarets 

Like sentries o'er the house-tops stand, 
And far away the dropping sky 

Melt in the desert's rippled sand. 
Through silence born of noonday heat 

And swooning radiance of the air 
I hear, from high muezzin tower 
Like conscience-cry. 

The Moslem's solenm call to prayer. 

And quick unrolling this bright rug 

I see its owner spread it down 
Where'er he stands — in porch or street — 

And turn his face toward Mecca's town. 
On this straight line of woven flame 

His knees by Allah's law must rest; 
His feet and hands these squares must touch, 
And in this niche 

Of softened hues his brow be pressed. 

And prostrate thus, he makes his plea 
To Allah fire times e'er the sun, 

A flaming chariot through the sky. 

Its course from da^vTi to dusk has run. 

This much I see with half-shut eyes, 
27 



Caught in the wierd rug's thralling snare, 
But, ah! I cannot catch the drift 
Of mystic signs 
That fashioned forth the Moslem's prayer. 

Prayed he that to his aged woes 

The Prophet's helping hand be lent, 
As answering the muezzin's call 

His wing-ed words to Allah went? 
Or yet — or yet, not old, but young — 

Young, with his pagan blood on fire 
With life and love's eternal quest. 
Prayed he instead 

To gain the port of Heart's Desire? 

The while — his face set toward the East — 

He wore the rug smooth with his knees, 
Did he recall some harem girl 

Whose eyes flashed him love's dear decrees? ■! 

I cannot tell; the rug gives back 

No faintest whisper of his prayer; 
He may have asked his rival's blood 
On whetted blade. 

Or yielded him to love's despair. 

I only know that o'er the leagues 

Of sand that's gold and sea that's brown 
A subtle thread spins in my brain 

To far Bokhara's sunlit town. 
And visions haunt me like dim dreams 
S8 



Whose baffling veil may ne'er be rent ; 
I only know, or rich or poor, 
I hold in fief 
Four square feet of the Orient. 



BAISON D'ETRE 

WHAT matters the red of a laughing lip 
If it go unkissed? 
And where is the worth of small white hands 
If a lover's clasp be missed? 

Red lips may's well be pinched and pale 

If fates are all unkind, 
And small white hands go convent-sworn 

If eyes of men be blind. 

For beauty is hostage for sweets of life 

Since time began to move. 
And the raison d'etre of living at all 

Is ever and always love. 



ROSES 

(VALENTINE SONG) 

IT was just a rose I sent her, 
Just a half -blown rose, 
And the message that it carried 
Everybody knows. 
29 



Each petal bore a greeting 

For my lady fair, 
And, oh, the whole wide world might read 

What was written there. 

For roses are Love's servitors — 

Roses red as wine. 
" I love you, love you, love you, sweet," 

Is their mystic sign. 

It was just a rose I sent her. 

Just a fragrant rose. 
But that it carried all my heart 

Everybody knows! 



SONG AND SINGER 

I HEAR it in the vast, vague silences 
That thrall the ebon night. 
Singing its soul out to the pallid stars 
That guard Elysian height. 

At noon, high-tide of day's tumultuous roar, 

'Tis calling, calling still; 
And, oh ! it comes to me like pipes o' Pan 

From off the sunset hill. 

The dusk is vocal with its cadences 
That throb from star to star. 

And, seraph-voiced, amid the radiant dawn 
It lures me from a-f ar. 
30 



Awake or half a-dream, I catch each note 

As soft as coo of dove, 
For the song is sung straight into my heart, 

And the name of the singer is Love I 



SCUPPERNONG WINE 

(SONG) 

'rTRlS prisoned here in my hfted glass, 

I The amber shine of the sun 
That glowed to wine as the days went by 

Ere the summer's reign was done. 
It wove the story of moms and eves 

Like ebon and silver bars. 
But ever it holds the light of the sun 

And not of the cold white stars. 

Then fill the glass to the crystal brim 
And let sweet memories rise, 

As we toast a friend of the long ago 
Or drink to a sweetheart's eyes. 

The rare, red wine that the mad world quaffs 
Warms the pulse to a quick, fierce beat. 

But the liquid gold in the goblet there 
Is keeper of fancies sweet. 

And a dream comes out of the misty years 
With a rare, insistent grace 
31 



Of a grapevine swing in a leafy dell 
And a girl who had your face ! 

Then fill the glass to the crystal brim 
And let sweet memories rise, 

As we toast a friend of the long ago 
Or drink to a sweetheart's eyes. 



OLD LETTERS 

IN a chest in the shadowy attic, 
Tied with a ribbon once blue 
I found them, these close-written letters. 

Like an Ariadne clew 
They lead me back through the spring-times 

Where the phantom shadows dance. 
Through daffodil-gold and lure of rose 
To the heart of an old romance. 

In a window shaft of the sunlight 

That falls like a golden flail, 
I spread out the yellowing pages, 

Unwinding the dim old tale. 
Here first he recalls how he met her. 

And subtly you guess the end 
Though with wonderful circumspection 

He has signed himself " your friend." 

But the careful friendship he offers 

Is but a mask for his heart, 
For I feel already the stage is set 

And Cupid is playing his part. 
32 



So I read on, breathless with interest, 

Turning the torn leaves back 
And find — (O Plato, Plato, you rascal!) 

" Ever your true lover, Jack." 

In this he upbraids her for teasing. 

Confesses the theft of her glove. 
And then in a passion of pleading : 

" Belinda, I love you ! I love ! " 
And then — Ah, what came between them, 

What sad misfortune befell? 
For here in the last of the letters 

He is bidding Belinda " farewell." 

Ah, I'll never piece out the whole story, 

For no more letters are here. 
And — Is grandpa out there in the garden 

Calling : " Belinda, my dear ! " 
And listen ! — is that fluting treble 

My grandma answering back 
Like a dove to its love-mate calling: 

" Coming, my sweetheart Jack ! " 

I fold up the yellowing pages 

With a feeling of odd regret — 
Just to think that my staid little grandma 

Was once such a gay coquette ! 
For in the meeting down in the garden 

I read with a single glance 
The story from where the letters broke off— 

The end of the old romance. 
33 



VISIONS 

I READ the wonder-pages of the world 
And see across them slowly go 
The marshalled hosts of long-lost yester-years, 

Their flag afloat or trailing low. 
The poet or historian spins for me 

Full many a tale of truth and grace, 
But — 'twixt my eyes and their clear-printed page 
There steals the vision of your face. 

For me a singer opens wide the realm 

Where mystic shapes of music throng, 
And all the glories of celestial choirs 

Drift by me on enchanted song. 
And then — I cannot tell you how or why — 

The music dies of its own choice 
And in the place of pealing organ notes. 

Heart all a-throb, I hear your voice. 

Through dim-lit galleries I softly move 

And see the scenes some master brush 
Has made to live again, and on my soul 

There falls a sweet and solemn hush ; 
For though each canvas holds a dream inspired 

That lures me with artistic wile, 
It fades to nothingness, and in its place 

I catch the radiance of your smile. 



EX TENEBRIS 

BEFORE us all the way lies dark, 
A rugged, sunless length ; 
And yet we ask thee not for light 
To make the gloomy spaces bright 
And give the stinging thorns to sight — 
We only pray for strength. 

For strength to shroud dead love and lay 

The rue where roses blend; 
For strength to tread, with eyes unwet 
And lips calm-touched 'gainst useless fret. 
The paths wherein our feet are set. 
And so to reach the end. 



THE GOOD-BYE ROAD 

NO sign-board guides, but we may not miss 
The Goodbye Road, the Goodbye Road ; 
It starts in the rain, in a rain of tears. 
With a roseleaf kiss and a shudder of fears 
As we pass to the Last Abode. 

And whither it runs beyond the turn 

Nobody knows, nobody knows. 
For the eyes we loved and the lips we kissed 
Are lost in the shrouding shadows and mist. 

And 'tis dark where the roadway goes. 
85 



But oh, we know who wait beyond 

The Goodbye Road, the Goodbye Road, 
And the years are slow and the days are long 
Ere we catch the step and learn the song 
That end in the Last Abode. 



ISCARIOT 

YOUR soul is yours ; God gave it you 
As pure as are His stainless stars, 
And no one save yourself can blur 
Its fairness with defacing scars. 

By other hands your hope may fail, 
By alien acts your heart be rent, 

But ere your spirit feels the soil 
Unto the wrong you must consent. 

The poppy-blooms of sin spring thick 
Along the path to each high goal ; 

'Tis when you pluck them you become 
The Judas of your own white soul. 



DAY BY DAY 

NIGHTFALL, and the daytime's fierce battle 
Is over and done; 
Red is my sword, deep red with the carnage 
Of conflicts unwon. 

36 



Beaten, discouraged with failure, 

Forsaken, betrayed — 
Yet I ask for no help and no quarter, 

I yield neither banner nor blade. 

For he who is armed, though defeated, 

May yet hold his post, 
And a flag still unfurled is the signal 

That hope is not lost. 

And the night is but truce to day's struggle, 

A rift in the pain ; 
I must keep my high place on the ramparts- 

For tomorrow we fight again. 



FRAGMENTS 

A DESERT place, and over it 
The sunset shadows trailing slow. 
And all that weary multitude — 

Foregathered from the plain below — 
Caught in the radiant after-glow. 

He raised his eyes, the Nazarene 
Who by a miracle had fed 

The thousands in the wilderness. 
And : " Gather up the broken bread. 
The fragments of the feast," He said. 
3T 



And forth they fared, his chosen ones, 
Who late had served the famished host, 

And gleaned, and came again weighed down 
With fragments that aside were tossed; 
And not a crumbled crust was lost. 



Down all the ages men have read 
The frugal lesson that He taught ; 

And yet — if it was only crumbs He meant— 
The wasted bits the baskets caught — 
The miracle were but half wrought. 

For other fragments we must seek 
While in life's wilderness we bide ; 

Yea, broken faiths we loved and lost, 
And shattered creeds our sins denied, 
And shards of hope o'er which we cried! 

From out the chaos of some grief 
That wrecked our idols as it passed, 

The fragments must be gathered up 
And in a fairer molding cast. 
And given back to God at last. 



38 



FORGIVENESS 

IS AY to you : 
Forgive your friend, if so he drops 
Into your heart a stinging word. 
He will be sorry by and by 

And all his higher nature stirred 
To live more purely when he sees 
You put aside the thing you heard. 

And yet again : 

Forgive your enemy ; he wounds 

With malice, hoping that the dart 
May rankle deep and fester sore. 

You shame him by the better part 
Of unrequited hate, and rob 

Of all its after-lust the venomed dart. 

Your friend and foe — 

Forgive these two the seventy 

By seven times that love decreed, 
For each forgiveness lifts you up 

(From taint of sordid passions freed) 
To heights of true nobility. 

Where Truth fulfils the spirit's need. 

But mark you this : 

One thing you shall not e'er forgive 

The while the folding years descend. 
And that is YOUR OWN SELF, if so 

You wrong a foe or wound a friend ; 
For no soul that condones its fault 

£Jpj9)es white and unscarred to the end. 



SEA GULLS 

(BILOXI) 

THREE gulls flying in over the gulf, 
Gray, as the waters are gray. 
On their out-spread wings the glancing light, 
On their breasts the up-tossed spray. 

Out of the foam-white reaches they come 

Heading straight into the shore. 
Weary with glorious circles of flight 

Where the wind-bom billows roar. 

And two in the lead fly wing-and-wing. 

With the joy of living elate, 
But the one that lags so far behind — 

It has lost its life long mate. 

And to gull of the sea or man of the shore 
Who the joy of loving has known 

The way is long and the way is dark 
When it's traveled alone, alone. 



PILGRIM THOUGHTS 

WE sit always at the fork of the road 
Where the thoughts of the world go by, 
Seeking their goals in the hearts of men 
To sully or purify. 
40 



There stalks the incipient murder dream, 
And envy and malice and pain 

Crowd close behind with a selfish leer 

Like the links of an unwound chain. 

But, ah ! the beautiful thoughts come, too, 
The thought of a love that is pure, 

The clean, high thought of a conquering soul. 
And the rose-sweet hopes that lure. 

And we sit forever beside the road 

Keeping the pilgrim score, 
But only the thoughts come into our hearts 

To which we open the door. 



CHIMNEY TOPS 

BEYOND my window ledge I see 
The roofs across the way. 
Their chimneys silhouetted sharp 

Against the ashen day. 
A trail of smoke of darker hue 

High up the cloud-way swings. 
And then — white pigeons skurry by 
On silent, silken wings. 



41 



A dull, disheartening scene ; and yet 

This lesson we may learn : 
Far down the chimneys' blackened throats 

The hearth fires softly burn. 
From stair to stair, down every flight, 

They keep the secret fast 
Of burned-out ash or ruddy glow — 

Starved hearts or love at last. 

And blackened roofs are shielding tents 

Where hide from passing ken 
The primrose joys of hope and peace 

Or sins of soul-wrecked men 
Who, like the caravans of old, 

Rest in their tents a-day. 
And then o'er time's uncharted sands 

Slip silently away. 

Ah, sordid roofs and chimney tops 

Up there in silhouette, 
You keep a thousand loves and lies 

And ghosts of old regrets ! 
The while the pigeons on the eaves 

With snowy, folded wings. 
Bear witness that 'mid soil and grime 

May live the cleaner things. 



42 



SHIPWRECKED 

HIGH on the beach it lies, its prow 
That cut the crystal of the deep 
And clove a path where billows sweep, 
Amid the golden shallows now 
Is lifted helpless to the sun. 

Some mighty tempest drove it far 

From its proud course, and tossed it where 
Tides may not claim it from despair 

Or drift it o'er the harbor bar 

To sail the world-ports once again. 

A sullen wreck, upon the strand 
'Twill lie, late rover of the sea. 
Until some storm shall set it free 

From clinging weed and cloying sand 
And give it back to wind and waves. 



Beside the track of life they wait. 

Self -wrecked through passions undenied 
Or whelmed with burdens multiplied. 

The human derelicts of fate. 

The men whom God seems to forget. 

Seems to forget and set apart 

Because in sloth their golden day 
Of love and trust was sinned away. 

(Perchance He left them that some heart 
Might higher reach through servitude.) 



Only a voice clear-toned with hope, 
Only a hand with faith made strong 
Can lift them from the slough of wrong 

And set them on the upward slope — 
These derelicts of life and love. 



GREAT SOULS 

GOD made the stars as by a formula, 
And each one settled in its place 
And shines in far-off realms of space. 
Alike, yet different in glory — 
Some pale, some dominate the dark 
With steadfastness. 

God made us men and women in a mold, 
But gave us souls of varied aims. 
The smaller ones yield to convention's claims 

And warp themselves to petty rules of life ; 

But, ah ! the great souls know no herding hand 
Of mastery. 

They cleave the mysteries of Right and Wrong 
And read the creeds of Love and Hate — 
A law unto themselves and fate. 
Nor ever stoop to soil or sordidness. 
They differ like the stars, yet each one bears 
The stamp of God. 
44! 



THE CUP 

YEA, it is bitter ; did you think to find 
It was all sweet? 
The Marah-taste is in each liquid drop 
Your lips must meet. 

For you are part of human woe and weal, 

And you must drain — 
Down to the leaden lees that drug the draught — 

The cup of pain. 

Nor must you seek to put it by ; that were 

The coward's part ; 
Your lips may tremble as you drink, but brave 

Must be your heart. 

But know this for a truth : or crystal clear 

Or warm wine-red, 
Christ quaffed the self same cup in ages past ; 

Therefore be comforted. 

No bitterer for you the draught prescribed 

Than that for Him ; 
And know, that where his pale lips touched. He left 

A blessing on the rim. 

A blessing that your sorrow-clouded eyes 

Have not yet read. 
But it will be revealed in years to come. — Drink, 

And be comforted. 
45 



DAWN 

DAWN — and a whole long day before, 
With Good or 111 to write the score 
For all the flying years — 
A day in which our hopes are cast, 
A day to live as 'twere our last 
Ere comes life's evensong. 

Dawn — and the threads of love to spin, 
And the tender tasks by which we win 

The goal of all our dreams. 
We must lift the rose or bear the hod. 
For every day is a tryst with God 

To keep the faith. 



CHARITY 

IS it to drop full carelessly 
A penny in the beggar's hand 
And salve the conscience with the thanks 
The whining crone has planned? 

Is it to feed a hungry mouth 

With leavings from a board well spread, 
The bits of meat we cast away. 

The hardest crusts of broken bread? 
46 



Is it to clothe a naked child 

Or freezing man against the storm, 
With worn-out garments which have ceased 

To keep our pampered bodies warm ? 

Is this, then, all of charity. 

These carnal gifts of man to man? 
Nay ; these were but the outer husks 

In Christ's revivifying plan. 

To stop thine ears 'gainst evil tales 

Of slander and of shame; 
To say, "judge not," when wanton tongues 

Befoul with sneers a once fair name — 

To guard thy lips close-shut lest they 
Join in the hounding, coward cry 

With which a horde of censurers 
Drives forth a lonely soul to die — 

To hold thyself too pure and true 

To trample on another's woe. 
Believing what thou hast not seen. 

Condemning what thou canst not know — 

To do these things is best to use 
The charity that Christ decreed. 

For transient are the body's wants. 
Eternal is the spirit's need. 

47 



Thou canst not read another heart 
Nor probe the mysteries of Hf e ; 

Thou knowest not 'gainst what deadly odds 
Was waged the bitter, long-drawn strife. 

Nor canst thou tell what ground was held, 
How near the triumph was complete ; 

One postern lost, the world condemns 
And on the banner writes " Defeat." 

If we slay man, his brother man 
Extorts of us the murderer's dole; 

God judges when, with word unjust, 
We thrust aside a stricken soul ! 

So owe we it to Christ himself 
To judge with his sweet charity 

Those who, half hid in censure's cloud. 
Walk in their dread Gethsemane ! 



BUILDING ANEW 

A -DREAM beside the cloistered gates of time 
That swing between the Now and Far Away, 
I thought I saw the faded phantom years 
Creep slowly past the portals of the Day. 

And nations that have swayed the world amain, 
Chaldea and Syria, Egypt's swarthy host, 

And yearning Greece and godless Rome went by 
And in the nimbus of the dawn were lost. 

48 



And cities of a strange and ancient build — 
Palmyra, marbled-columned, purple-domed, 

Dido's old Carthage, and famed Babylon, 

Where men have reigned and untamed beasts have 
roamed — 

These rose from chaos and went back to dust, 
And Progress, phoenix-natured, kept her state 

In conclave of the swiftly moving years 
And built anew that which was desolate. 

And to myself, still half a-dream, I said 

Here was but symbol of a human life — 
So press we ever toward the widening dawn. 

So tread upon the shards of death and strife. 

And Love and Hope are architects to build 
Above our failures never faith and trust, 

As states and peopled cities rise and shine 
High o'er the ruins of the old world's dust. 



TOMORROW 

TODAY is yours — 
Its arch of overbending sky, 
Its dream-filled cloud-ship sailing by, 

Its drip of pearl-gray rain ; 
Its bloomy breath of rue or rose. 
Its call of love, its hate of foes. 
Its stab of jealous pain. 
49 



The day that's gone — 

That Yesterday that comes not back, 

But goes like peddler 'neath its pack 

Of failures, hopes and fears — 
That day to Memory belongs ; 
Its whimpered griefs, its cadenced songs 

Are chattels of the years. 

Tomorrow ? Ah ! — 

A field untilled, a rose unblown, 

Tomorrow is God's very own 

To test your truth and power. 
'Tis yours to spoil or spend it well. 
To fill with peace or curse of hell 

Each wondrous, winged hour. 



SELF-CONQUEST 

IT was no use, the sharp revolt. 
The bitter protest of my soul 
'Gainst destiny that seemed to mock 

And hold me from my highest goal. 

I said that I would break the bonds, 

That somehow I would master fate ; 

Beyond pain's winding labyrinth 

New spheres of hope I would create. 

Alas ! I only bruised my hands 

Nor found a clue from out the maze, 
50 



And so, heart-sick, I have come back — 
Back to the parting of the ways. 

And here, where hot rebellion dies 

And selfishness has paid its dole, 

I see, far down the path abhorred, 

The gleaming white light of my goal ! 

For primrose paths lead not to joy, 

'Tis reached across the shards of pride ; 

And he who'd find his better self 

Must go back where the paths divide. 



LAGNIAPPE* 

THE common, needful gifts are ours by right 
Of human law — air, food and roof and fire ; 
But what of all the many thousand wants 
That fill the measure of our heart's desire? 

What of our power to read in far-flung stars 
The epic of creation's dawn and rise. 

Or catch the radiant resurrection truth 
A purple crocus opens to our eyes? 

What of the sunlight on a field of wheat — 
The signal of the cloud-ships far above? 

The lure of Hope that paints the shadows gold — 
What of that wonder-bloom, the Rose of Love t 
* Creole expression for a gratuity. 

51 



These are the largess that we take of fate, 

Take royally, as we were thrice crowned kings, 

Nor stop to ask — the glimpse of higher goals. 

The dreams that send our hearts on upward wings! 



FLYING SOUTH 

OUT of the ice-cold north they come. 
The wild geese, flying high ; 
A zigzag streak of glancing gray, 
An errant cloud blown far astray 
Athwart the azure sky. 

Like fugitives that look not back 

But take the path they know. 
They shun the snow's keen-stinging smart, 
And to the south's warm, waiting heart 

On silken wings they go. 

And there in lush of reedy fens. 

Fanned by each fragrant breeze. 
Through days of sun and nights of moon 
That blend the year in one sweet June, 
They take their slothful ease. 

They go, those soulless, gabbling ones, 

And leave us here behind 
In patience or in pain, to meet 
The bitter bite of driving sleet. 

The whips of racing wind. 
62 



Yet who would follow if they could? 

The soul grows strong through strife ; 
The bravest hearts ask no surcease — 
'Tis only cowards, like the geese, 

Who fly from storms of life. 



TWO WHO PRAYED 

** rXlWO went up to the temple to pray," 
I When the last sun-hours were brief, 
And the people said, as they saw them pass, 
" A gentleman there, and a thief." 

A gentleman clad as a man should be 
Who takes the world by the throat 

And wrests its wealth ; but the other one walked 
In shame of a threadbare coat. 

And there where the aureole window flamed 

And the altar lights burned low 
They knelt and prayed, one fluent and calm, 

One trembling of speech and slow. 

One pleaded to God of the snare of gold — 

The lure of a loaf of bread ; 
And he bared his soul to the conscience lash 

And told how his heart had bled. 

He had taken the thing that was not his. 

And paid to the law its dole ; 
His hands were " red " with a stolen crust. 

But the stain reached not his soul. 



The other man boasted of things achieved, 

Of gold piled up through the years ; 
But under the words God caught the drip 

Of an ill-paid woman's tears. 

And he told also how he built the shops, 
Where was work for the hungry horde ; 

And he plumed himself on his charities, 
" Confessing " them to the Lord. 

But he said no word how he drove and skimped 

The poor of their honest due ; 
How children cried in his cruel mills, 

But the pitiful God, He knew. 

When the prayers were done and the two came forth, 

Where the sunset spilled its sheaf. 
The people bowed, but the angels knew 

The gentleman from the thief. 



THE CREEPERS 

WHY is it that the worth-while things 
Seem always those we may not do.*^ 
Ambition-cursed, we sit beside 

The quiet ways that never knew 
The stir of life 

54* 



And hear the whir of great events, 
The sweep of mighty deeds go past, 

And feel within our souls the thrill ; and yet 
From sharing in them holden fast 

By bonds of fate. 

We dream of greatness day by day, 
And day by day do petty things ; 

We know that we could fly, but must 
Quiescent stand with folded wings 

At duty's side. 

And yet — how can we know but in the end, 

When life blooms to eternity, 
We may not find the little deeds 

Rose-bright with immortality 
Because of love? 

For it may chance that in the plan 
Of life and death and after-days, 

God counts the hourly tasks well done 
Greater than hero deeds of praise 

That shake the world. 



THE OPEN ROAD 

WE know not what it is, the whisper low 
That each of us must hear. 
We call it Death, but what is Death 
Behind the pall and bier? 
55 



And what is that wide open grave 
With all its weighting clods? 

Is it a door from life's wide hall 
That opens into God's? 

We cannot tell, but this we pray 

Beside that close-shut door ; 
Death must be sweet, since those who die 

Come back no more, no more. 

Life may itself be but a sleep, 

A mystery supreme. 
And that low whisper at the end 

May wake us from a dream. 

When my call comes I shall not need 

The urge of biting goad. 
Like pilgrim I will fare me forth — 

Upon Death's Open Road. 



DEATH 

Be comforted, 
O frail and faint of heart who stand dismayed 
And trembling on life's crumbling brink ; 
The road beyond the grave may not be long. 
Heaven may lie closer than we think. 

56 



For it may be 
That end of life is but the opening wide 
Of some shut door through which there flows 
The muted music of the universe — 
The breath of Eden, perfumed like a rose. 

What we call death 
May be in truth the swift and sure escape 
As from some loathsome prison-keep — 
The touching of a light-spring in the dark — 
The waking from a troubled, anxious sleep. 

Dread not to grope 
And linger in some darkened sphere ; 
A single step, and leagues of space 
And whirling worlds may be o'er sped, 
And God and soul stand face to face. 

The hand which slips 
Nerveless and chill from earthly clasp — 
The pulseless hand your living friends must yield- 
May be caught up (Oh, sweet and blessed hope!) 
By some dear lost one waiting unrevealed. 

Therefore, be comforted, 
O ye who've traveled to the end of life 
And stand, foot-sore, upon its crumbling brink ; 
The onward journey is not long nor lone, 
The Realm of Rest lies nearer than we think. 
Therefore, be comforted! 
5 67 



HIGH TIDE 

NO sign of rocks ; the crescent beach 
That showed all golden with the noon. 
Has disappeared beneath the reach 
Of serpent-twisting waves that hymn 
A world-dirge to the moon. 

Too deep for cavernous call the reef 

Is hid ; above it, full and free, 
But with a silence hushed and brief. 

The waters flow far up the strand — 
'Tis high tide on the sea. 

And in the lives of men there falls 

Sometimes, like shadows from their lair, 

A calm like this ; when passion palls 
And love and hate are stricken dumb — 
The high tide of despair. 

And in the silence hushed and dread 
They catch the sound of funeral clod 

On passions spent and anger dead ; 
And putting forth a groping hand 
Amid the dark, they touch at last 
The patient hand of God. 



58 



LOW TIDE 

A STRETCH of beach bared to the sinking sun, 
Rocks slimed with sea-weed, and a wet 
Black spar, lone derelict from some old wreck 
The storms claimed for a sea-god's debt. 
Nothing but ugliness where'er I tracked the sand — 
Nothing but ooze and mud. My dim eyes ached. 

Then suddenly amid the swirl 
Of broken shells and weeds and dreary drift 
I found a white and priceless pearl. 
Left for me by the tide. 

Hi ¥lt * * * * * 

Long days and nights bereft of sun and stars. 

Gray skies with grayer thoughts and fears. 
And Failure, spectre-like and evil-eyed, 

That haunted all the shadowed years. 
Nothing in life but heart ache and despair — 
Nothing but toil and pain — My soul was sick ! 

Then sudden in the gray above 
A rift of blue ; and 'mid the close-set thorns 

I saw, full blown, the rose of Love 
Waiting my outstretched hand. 



MANUMISSION 

TODAY we are bound in the shambles 
Nor dream of a swift transition. 
Yet tomorrow may bring to us, toiling, 
The hour of manumission. 
69 



Today we are stranded in shallows, 

Cast up in a ruck of the lea, 
But tomorrow, with lift of the flood-tide, 

We may sail the limitless sea. 

Today we grope low in the valley 
'Mid silence and darkness forlorn ; 

Tomorrow, high up on the hill top. 
We'll sing the clear hymn of the dawn. 

And no man may shun the disaster. 
And no man may speed his release ; 

For today is but life and its heartache. 
Tomorrow, God's infinite peace. 



OPEN YOUR DOOR 

OPEN the door of your house ; 
Hoard not its splendor and its space, 
Its heart's-ease of its stately grace, 
Nor hold it an abiding place 

For you alone. 
Suppose God kept his heaven for him 
And left you in the shadows dim 
With wisp of light and snatch of hymn ? 
Open your door. 

Open the door of your heart ; 
Shut not your sympathy away 
From those who need it day by day ; 
Reach out a hand and bid them stay 
Within your love. 
60 



Suppose that you should one day come, 
Devoid of hope and starved and numb, 
And cry for love, and get a crumb ? 
Open your door. 

Open the door of your soul ; 
Hide not the spark of faith divine. 
The sweet, pure hope that is the sign 
Of God-head tender and benign, 

That man retains. 
Suppose one came in sorest plight, 
Came groping through the spirit's night 
And lost his way for lack of light 
Because you hid your lamp from sight? 

Open your door! 



RECOMPENSE 

AND what, indeed, if this be all, 
This little span of earthly years 
With fleeting hopes and transient tears. 
With froth of fame and dregs of fears? 
What if I have no deathless soul, 

But with the ceasing of life's stress 
(In spite of priestly lips that bless) 
I sink down into nothingness. 
Beyond the coffin and the somber pall 
To hear and answer no immortal call? 

61 



Could I complain if this should be? 

Nay, still I'd owe no grudge to fate, 
No bitter grievance could I prate — 
For joys of earth would compensate! 

For what if I had never known 

The surge of life, its thrill divine, 

The strength of strife, hope's star-white sign, 

The bitter-sweet of love's red wine? 

Ah, what if, through some trick of destiny, 

I'd missed this wondrous sweet mortality ! 



THE STORY HOUR 

FROM all the city's haunts the children come 
And crowd the quiet room, alert and still. 
Their interest keyed, their very smiles and tears 
Swayed ever at the story-teller's will. 

She stands among them with her face upraised. 
Building anew the wonder-dreams of old. 

At her command there grow to life again 
The faded legends which the centuries fold. 

And they who listen to her golden voice 

See from the shadows visions strange arise — 

Aladdin's palace glitters in the sun, 

Rome bums again before their startled eyes. 

They watch the Wise Men's camels cross the sands 
Trailing the fadeless Star of Bethlehem ; 

And once again by " many-towered Camelot " 
King Arthur's Knights ride in the lists for them. 

62 



They fight with Bruce, or hide with him in cave 
Where spider's gossamer draperies cling; 

Tell's arrow thrills them in its dizzy flight, 
With captive Richard they hear Blondel sing. 

They learn the story of the Pleiades 

And shining constellations as they pass. 

With fairies that hold tryst, or dance with her 
Who wore the magic slippers made of glass. 

From history's page or legendary lore 
The story-teller draws her varied theme. 

And straight there springs to vivid life once more 
Some long dead fact, some poet's golden dream; 

For Old and New and Past and Present lend 
A silver thread, a glowing jeweled bead 

To weave into the fabric of a tale 

That laughs with joy or teaches some high creed. 



CONFUCIUS TO CHRIST 

(China asks the prayers of the Christian world for success in her 
new political life.) 

OUT of the Orient echoes a call, 
Out of the distance there reaches a hand. 
And the keen cry bridges the chasm deep 

'Twixt the creeds of our own and that far-off land. 

6S 



" We're fighting a fight for a new, clean life, 
For truth and right we are waging our war, 

Oh, give us your prayers, ye Christian men 

Who read your faith by the Bethlehem Star ! " 

They have prayed their gods — the gods they have known 
Since world's were star-dust hurled into space — 

For the strength they need, but dumb and afar 
In dim Nirvana these hold their place. 

They have threaded the years with varying faiths. 
Bowing to Buddha, and worshipping Joss ; 

Now, in the stress of their newer need 

They're reaching out for the Calvary Cross. 

Out of the Orient comes the appeal. 

The land of the old ancestral dream — 
Confucius is crying at last to Christ, 

And Buddha is hailing the Lord supreme. 



SECOND SAMUEL, 1:20 

** rr^ELL it not in Gath, nor publish it 
I Within the streets of Askelon;" 
So spake a prophet of an olden time, 
A century long dead and gone. 

When in the haunts of daily life 

You pause to tell a neighbor's shame. 

Or whisper softly of some doubtful deed. 
Or stain with evil slur his name, 
64 



Have something more to justify your word 
Than that old thread-bare Hne, " they say," 

Or " I have heard," or that vampire " 'tis said "- 
Those thieves that steal the truth away. 

For these are subterfuges, scapegoats all. 
That scandal-mongers hide behind. 

And if you use them to speed on your tale 
You are the scandal-monger kind. 

For honest men will set their honest names 

To accusations they believe; 
'Tis only cowards (who may rend you next!) 

Who hide from blame they should receive. 

So if you dare not justify your tale, 
Recall the text of centuries gone. 

And tell it not in Gath, nor publish it 
Within the streets of Askelon ! 



SHIPS AT SEA 

FROM far beyond the wavering line 
Where the sky meets rock-a-by sea, 
Somewhere and from some unknown port 
My ships are sailing home to me. 

And this I know, for the God of all dreams 
Has whispered my heart it was so; 

Then what care I if the heavens be fair 
Or the wide-winged tempests shall blow.? 
65 



And one of my ships is a radiant Hope, 

And a rainbow arches the mast ; 
And one is a Memory, drifting away 

From the purple ports of the past. 

But my treasure-ship is a ship of Prayer, 
And it's winged with a white, white sail, 

And I know in my soul that the God of all dreams 
Will temper the tide and the gale ; 

And that some sweet day, from the silver mists 
Where the sky meets rock-a-by sea. 

My straining eyes shall glimpse the sails 
Of my ships come home from sea. 

And the radiant Hope shall bloom to a Joy, 
And the Memory shall lose its pain. 

And the answered Prayer, transfigured with faith, 
Make of life a glory again. 

And this do I know, for the God of all dreams 
Has whispered my heart it was so; 

Then what care I if the heavens be fair 
Or the wide-winged tempests shall blow ! 



66 



THE THIEF 

THOU shalt not steal." 
Was it to you 
God spake this stern decree? 
Nay, curl not so your scornful lip, 
As though that could not be. 

For he spake not alone to those 
Whose fingers snatch away 

The gem or coin or treasure rare — 
Those street-bred birds of prey. 

But if with idle, venomed word 

You soil your neighbor's name, 

Or rob him of a joy of life. 

Or cast an unjust blame — 

And further still, if so you take 
From your own soul its truth 

Or lower the standard of your creed, 
You are a thief in sooth. 

It was to you and all your kind 
Who bear the slander seal 

That God, in his omnipotence. 
Hath said: 

" Thou shalt not steal." 



67 



UNBEATEN 

YOU may only have dreamed of the mountain 
While you toiled in the valley below ; 
You may have seen only the storm's black wing, 
Though you sought for the radiant bow. 

And you may have reached forth for the laurel. 
And have grasped but a wind-swayed weed ; 

Or where you deemed there would blossom a hope, 
Found the ghost of an ill-starred deed — 

You may have longed for life's surge and its surfeit, 
And been chained to a tread-mill of chance — 

You may have fought with your banners foredoomed. 
May have yielded or broken your lance — 

And yet — Ah ! write not Defeat on your record, 
Nor brood o'er your failures long past, 

For there's ever and always Tomorrow 
With its lure of winning at last. 



VIGNETTES 

SOMEWHERE upon a quiet strand 
The little waves run home, 
And somewhere o'er the hidden rocks 
The white-caps snarl and foam. 

68 



Somewhere the gray gulls lonesomely 

Against the azure float, 
And somewhere on the sunlit sea 

There sails a fisher's boat. 

Somewhere high up upon the cliff 
A woman's straining eyes 

See just beyond the fore-doomed boat 
A whip of wind arise. 



Somewhere within the city's stir 
The guarded feet run safe, 

And somewhere on the cruel curb 
There strays the sordid waif. 

Somewhere beneath the softened light 
A woman wears love's crown, 

And somewhere in the shadow's lust 
Another's soul goes down. 

For storms at sea will rock and wreck 

The fisher's cockleshell. 
And on the heartless city's streets 

Are spread the snares of hell. 



69 



WANDERLUST 

THEY have all flown safe to the harbor's keep, 
Like frightened birds of the sea — 
The big, brave ships with their world-sought freight 

And the fishers' argosy. 
For the demon wind runs a free, mad race 

O'er the waste of waters wide 
And the harbor-bar is white with foam 
Of the hungry, tattered tide. 

They bent each oar and they filled each sail 

In the run with wind and rain, 
Yet now they labor and struggle and strive 

At each anchor's grating chain, 
Straining as though they would fain go back 

Where the whipping white sprays fall. 
Where the sea things mock, and full and shrill 

The horns of the Tritons call. 

And there are hearts all over the world 

That are bound like anchored ships ; 
And though like these they struggle and strain. 

Yet never a cable slips ; 
And never a sail is set to the breeze, 

And never may hope aspire 
To waft them over the harbor's rim 

To a land of New Desire. 

They are stranded fast in shallows of fate 
Where only the curlews cry, 
70 



While far beyond in th€ marts of men 

The quest of the world goes by. 
'Mid the deadening calm they long for stress, 

For bugles, for banners unfurled ; 
They'd slip their anchors today if they could 

To sail the ports of the world ! 



WITH LITTLE BOY BLUE 

(Answer to Eugene Field) 

SILENT he watched them, the soldier and dog, 
Tin toys on the little arm chair. 
Keeping their tryst through the slow-going years 

For the hand that stationed them there ; 
And he said that perchance the dust and the rust 

Hid the griefs that the toy friends knew. 
And his heart watched with them all the dark 3^ears, 
Yearning ever for Little Boy Blue. 

Three mourners they were for Little Boy Blue, 

Three ere the cold wings had begun; 
Now two are left watching — the soldier and dog — 

But for him the vigil is done ; 
For him, too, the angel has chanted a song, 

A song that is lulling and true — 
He has seen the white gates of the mansions of rest 

Thrown wide by his Little Boy Blue. 

71 



God sent not the Angel of Death for his soul — - 

Not the Reaper who cometh for all — 
But out of the shadows that curtained the day 

He heard his lost little one call ; 
Heard the voice that he loved, and following fast, 

Passed on to the Far-away strand. 
And he walks the streets of the City of Peace, 

With Little Boy Blue by the hand! 



REIN CAEN A TION? 

THEY come to all of us just now and then, 
Like fleeting spirit-memories. 
The visions of some place we never saw — 

Elusive, fading, phantasies 
That startle us as old familiar haunts 
We knew and loved in some lost time, 
Some age forgotten that has dropped away 
As dies the cadence of a rhyme. 

We turn a page, and there before us lies 

A picture of the crawling Nile, 
And instantly we know, untold, what lies 

Beyond the rushes, mile on mile. 
We are not here, for we shp back again, 

A part of that far age and land — 
With Cleopatra and with Antony, 

Treading those wastes of desert sand. 
72 



Or In a room of guests one speaks of Rome, 

The room fades out, and in a breath 
In crowded Coliseum we have turned 

Our thumbs to signal life or death. 
Or else again in thought of storied Greece 

We feel a wind like fanning flame. 
And know that once we ran a panting race 

In long forgot Olympic game. 

Or coming closer to our daily life — 

Sometimes we reach a stranger's door 
And recognize it through mysterious sense 

And say : " We have been here before," 
Though we are sure we never trod the path 

Nor saw the house until that hour ; 
Yet there is etched upon our consciousness 

The merest detail of a fragile flower. 

What can it be, this submerged other self. 

This surety of having seen 
And been a vital part of those lost years 

That time's relentless sickles glean? 
Have we lived other lives than this today. 

Recast each time in varied mold, 
And are these prescient instincts memories. 

In very truth, of days long told? 



73 



THE SEEKER 

NOT of the whip-herded ninety and nine — 
Slaves of each petty woe or weal, 
Dragged at convention's chariot wheel — 
Would be this wakened, panting soul of mine. 

But I would be the One who, undismayed, 

Joy-eyed with freedom, from the common press 
Went forth into the wilderness. 

The One the grieving shepherd said had " strayed." 

Strayed? It only wearied of the trodden way, 
The narrow grooves, the empty creeds. 
And breaking through the hedging wayside weeds 

It climbed the mountain peaks to meet the day ! 

So would I be. Old beaten tracks, old bars. 

Old shells of faiths I'd leave below. 

And up far heights of sun and snow 
I'd find a new trail to the beckoning stars ! 



WILD OATS 

** A H, let them alone — " 'tis the age-old cry- 

iV " Boys will ever be boys, you know ; 

They must plow the world to the rim of youth. 

Their fields of wild oats they must sow, 
Let them alone — ^they are immune 

To leash of straight-laced moral code. 
BOYS WILL BE BOYS ; they measure life 
By laws that license has bestowed." 
74 



This is the hectic creed of the years, 

The damning lie that parents preach 
To ease their conscience of the blame 

For higher goals they failed to reach. 
Immune, these sowers of wild-oat tares ? 

There's never a single garnered field 
Where sickles of sorrow have cut their swarths 

But tells its tale of a misery yield. 

Go, look in the wards where the maniacs rave. 

Their brain cells brimmed with liquid fire 
Through mad misrule of uncurbed wills 

Or the blight of a foul desire. 
And count, if you can, the blameless hosts — 

The waifs unfathered and unnamed — 
Who, under the light of God's blue sky, 

Must live their cheated lives ashamed. 

And, ah ! the " drunks " and the derelicts 

Lined day by day at the judge's bar. 
And the man who limps on a shriveled limb — 

A horrible, visible moral scar ! 
And the frightened girl with her shame revealed 

Leaping down where the moonbeams quiver. 
Her epitaph but the scornful line: 

" A floater dragged from the river." 

And the men hard-lipped and filled with fear 
As they slip from the doctor's door. 

Hiding his verdict of loathsome taint — 

(Oh, the wives who must pay THAT score!) 

75 



Hating the secret noisomeness 

That saps with its creeping ills. 
Hating the wild oats that they sowed 

In the lustful pace that kills. 

These are the boys who " would be boys," 

Not held to straight laced moral code, 
The boys who measured their golden youth 

By laws that license had bestowed. 
They tread the trail where the serpent crawled 

And are slimed with its vicious stain, 
They plow their oats with the plow of sin 

And reap with the sickle of pain. 

L'Envoi — 

And the gleaners who come in the after years- 
Generations born under that spell? 

In taint of body and smirch of soul 
They garner an endless hell! 



HEREDITY 

I WILL live my life as it has been planned, 
No good comes ever of idle fret ; 
I will look each day in the face, clear-eyed, 
With silent lips and a cheek unwet. 

I will eat of the Dead Sea fruit of grief 
And give no sign of its bitter tang ; 

I will tread, blind-fold, the hot plough-shares, 

Hearing the song that the martyrs sang. 

76 



I will drink, athirst and whelmed with woe, 
The brine of tears naught could appease — 

Yea, undismayed I will drain the draught 
And break the cup at the bitter lees. 

I will bear my cross up Calvary's mount 
Where Sorrow sits with barbs and scars, 

But the summit gained, I will lift mine eyes 
Beyond the cross to the steadfast stars. 

And this I will do through a pride of race. 
For clean red blood with its instincts high ; 

Who whimpers and grovels 'neath whips of fate 
Shames the heritage proud of ancestry. 

For the crucial test of a man is pain 
Of body or soul, which e'er it be ; 

The coward's brood quails, but he who is sired 
Of faith and courage fights valiantly. 



FREE AGENTS 

IT is with us to choose — 
The path 
That runs through lush of bloom that grows 

(In stress of passing days) 
To fruits forbidden ; or the stony track 
Down which no scented zephyr blows. 
There is no road between. 
77 



God draws the clear-cut trails, 
And then 
Throws us the chart, nor makes a sign, 

Nor lifts a warning hand 
To bind our judgment either way — 
We follow as we may incline — 

The masters of our fate. 

And in Forbidden Lands 
We quaff 
The purple wine of mad desire 

And go unsatisfied ; 
And in the twilight come, athirst and sad. 
To dreary wastes scorched as with fire, 

And find but Pain at last. 

But if the arid path 
We choose. 
The stones shall blossom where we tread 

And leave a trail of Love ; 
And even-song shall find us where 
Cool lilies lean, and roses blossom red. 

And star-eyed Peace abides. 



THE OLD CALENDAR 

A SHEAF of days this ribbon held, 
A whole long year 
Of shade and shine and snow and bloom 
Was gathered here 

On this old calendar. 
78 



It dwindled slowly, leaf by leaf ; 

Just like a rose 
Whose full-blown petals seek the sod 

Was each day's close 

On this old calendar. 

And now — the end. And there is left 

For witness brief, 
The painted scroll and silken band 

That held the sheaf 

On this old calendar. 

But somewhere, sometime we will find 

The gathered leaves 
Bound in a record of our lives — 

The chaff and sheaves 
On this old calendar. 



THE COMING AND THE GOING 

WITH spendthrift gold of daffodils. 
With red of a rose, 
With purple pomp of shadows where 
The lilac grows — 

With kingly scarlet in the hedge 

Where sumacs burn. 
With gray of ashes scattered far 

From Time's inverted urn — 

79 



With anthems glad from feathered choirs, 

Bluebird and lark, 
With five low notes the thrushes sing 

Before the dark — 

Thus came the year now dead and gone, 
With color and with song 

And the crystal promise of soul to soul 
To do no wrong! 



How did you use the free-gift year, 

Now but a wraith ? 
Did you hold its pledge of good in your heart 

And keep the faith ? 

How did you sepulchre this sweet year, 

Gone back to God — 
With a rose of love on its shriven breast. 

Or only a clod? 

For records you leave with the vanished years 

Will witness true 
When out of the dusk the Master calls 

The soul of you. 



80 



THE FINISHED PAGE 

(1917) 

TURN down the page ! 
For it is spoiled with careless smear 
And dark with shadows wrought of pain ; 

Across it lie the purple stains 
Which nothing can make white again — 

Our slighted creeds. 

Turn down the page ! 

God gave it us a year ago 
To write our record fair and broad, 

And we have reddened it with strife — 
Give us another leaflet, Lord, 

And take this back. 

Turn down the page — 

This page of failure and of doubt, 
Where only here and there a line — 

Half blurred with blot of selfish tears — 
Is lettered-gold with faith divine 

That would not die. 

Turn down the page ; 

And give us. Lord, another leaf. 
We are but children who have spoiled 

Their copy. Bid us write again. 
Each line shall show where Love has toiled 
If you give us a clean, white leaf 

And turn this down, 
Dear Lord of Hosts ! 
81 



THE WRITTEN SCROLL 

(NEW YEAR) 

YEAR'S ending, and the long scroll lies 
Unrolled beneath our aching eyes — 
The written scroll of all the deeds 
That filled the measure of the year — 
A phrase of hope, a line of fear, 
A reaching out to higher creeds — 

A tender word that soothed a friend, 
A smile that lasted to the end 

Of some fierce trial of the heart, 
The brave, bright smile of duty done ; 
A hand reached to some stumbling one, 

Too weak to choose the better part ; 

These are the glories of the scroll, 
These high lights of the shriven soul 

That glow across the written page. 
But, ah ! the blots that mar and stain. 
The blots we ne'er can cleanse again 

Because of sin they are the wage ! 

The sin of hate, the sin of greed. 

The scandal spread, the unjust deed, 

The coward-shirking of a blame ; 

These seemed so small when they were done, 

Now as we read them one by one 

They smite our hearts with sudden shame. 
******* 

82 



The scroll is finished. Heart of mine, 
Learn well the lesson of each line, 

The warning whispered from above. 
Another scroll God gives you here, 
A new page for the untried year — 

Oh, write it full of hope and love ! 



THEIR GIFTS 

FRANKINCENSE they brought Him and gold 
and myrrh. 
Those men who came out of the dawn, 
Each tracking his way from a far-off land 
Through lush of blossom or drift of sand 
To the manger where He was born. 

Strange gifts for a child, but the wise men knew 

All the wonder the future would hold ; 
For them His marvelous star had flamed white. 
And each, by its calm, transfiguring light 
Read the prophecies eons old. 

And their three-fold gift they spread at His feet : 

" Incense for a priest," one cried ; 
And one whose voice had a victory ring 
Flung down his tribute : " Here's gold for a king ! " 

And : " Myrrh for healing," one sighed. 

And the wise men's gifts foreshadowed His life — 
Each bearing its mystic part — 
83 



Though His priestly robe was a mantle of scorn 
And His kingly crown was a platted thorn, 
Yet He healed the world's sad heart. 



FOR HE WAS MARY'S SON 

(GOOD FRIDAY) 

IT was the Mary-part of him that prayed 
Beneath the garden's midnight sky 
That it might be the Father's holy will 

The death-drugged cup should pass him by — 

The mother-heritage, the earthly trait 

So sweet and yet so prone to err ; 
For he was half her child, this suppliant, 

Born of the blood and bone of her. 

Had he been all divine, the dreaded cup 
He would have quaffed and made no sign. 

Nay, more ; the draught had had no bitter taste 
Had he been all divine — 

Had he been wholly God he had not feared 
E'en for a breath the stem decree 

That wrung from him the crucifixion cry : 
" Eloi, lama sabachthani I " 

But he was Mary's child as well as God's ; 

'Twas she who dowered him with the strain 
That taught him kinship with an aching heart, 

Yet made him coward at the thought of pain. 
84 



'Tis that he dreaded while he drained the cup 
That courage is the world's high creed ; 

'Tis that, in agony, he cried for help 
That he is pitiful to human need ! 



THAT MIDDLE CROSS ON CALVARY 

IT still is there, though time has run 
From century to century — 
That milestone of the flying years — 
That lowly Mount of Calvary. 

Dead empires with their weedy crowns 
Have crumbled into voiceless dust. 

And scepters that once ruled the world 
Are heaps of brown corroding rust ; 

In Egypt Memnon sings no more — 
We only guess the sun-waked tones ; 

We tread on buried Babylon, 

And seek in vain Palmyra's stones ; 

The clustered domes of Nineveh 
Are shards upon the desert sand, 

And Troy and all her mighty hosts 
Are legends of an unknown land. 

But — unf orgotten through the drift 

Of ages dim with mystery. 
That lowly Mountain keeps the trail 

That leads to Immortality. 
85 



The cities that we know today 

May sink beneath the sands of time, 

The history which now we write 
Some day may be forgotten rhyme. 

But that low Mount will still abide ; 

The hearts of men will not forget — 
High altar of a ransomed world 

Where tapers of our faith are set. 

They'll shine, those holy altar lights, 

And by their steadfast gleams we'll see — 

Through war and peace and life and death— 
That middle cross on Calvary. 



EASTER 

IS Easter but to send a fragrant flower 
And get one in return? 
Is it to pour the pennies you have saved 
Into the church's urn 
And feel self -sanctified? 

Is it to deck yourself in gorgeous robe 

Whose glories shall shine down 
Your neighbor's raiment, and so draw to you 

The smile or envious frown 

That leaves you satisfied ? 
86 



If this your creed, then all in vain you sit 

Today where lilies spill 
Their incense, and the organ's swelling peal 

Comes with a victory-thrill 

That stirs the raptured world. 

For Easter is nor gifts nor robings rare, 

Nor yet a song clear-sung; 
It is th' uplifting of the shriven soul 

From doubts that clasped and clung 

And into darkness whirled. 

If from some buried past our hopes can rise 
And catch the cadence rare 

Of world-hosannas throbbing with God's love, 
Each note a bead of prayer — 
Each prayer a tide that rolls — 

If, from old sins and passions that enslave. 

Our hearts can break away 
And rise triumphant from the dross of hate — 

Then is this Resurrection day. 

Then is it Easter in our souls ! 



AUTUMN 

THE year that came barefooted through 
The summer's dust-white lanes 
Has found her sandals by the hedge 
Where drip the autumn rains, 
87 



And bound them on her slender feet 
Bruised with the long hot trail, 

And gone again the onward way 
With lusty pilgrim hail. 

She counts the sparrows on the rail, 

Brown notes of song they seem 
Left by some singer in the sun 

Of summer's long lost dream. 
The Bob white's call she whistles back 

Across the wind-blown sedge. 
Or laughs into an empty nest 

Bared in the rifled hedge. 

Her once loose hair is braided close 

And crowned with crimson leaves ; 
And now and then she stops to lift 

A gleaner's golden sheaves ; 
And now and then, without a thought 

Of lawlessness or shame. 
With quick incendiary torch 

She sets the woods aflame. 

For on before there swiftly passed — 

Unseen of eyes of man — 
The Gypsy Frost, and laid for her 

The year's last patteran. 
And she will follow that dim path 

As o'er the hills it goes 
Until she casts her crimson crown 

Down at the Gate of Snows. 
88 



GOODBYE, SUMMER 

(AUG. 31, 1918) 

GOOD-BYE, Summer, with the golden smile, 
With fruited bough and song of bird, 
With whispers only lovers heard 
Or lovers spoke — 

Good-bye, good-bye. 

Good-bye, Summer, with your pale white stars 
Washed in the moon of twilight skies — 
With dreams that walked with half -shut eyes 
Across the hills — 

Good-bye, good-bye. 

Good-bye, Summer, with your roads unwound 
Like dust-gray skeins where thistles drift. 
And where our pilgrim thoughts ran swift 
To unseen goals — 

Good-bye, good-bye. 

Good-bye, Summer, with your sweetheart soul, 
Your welded faith or broken tryst, 
Your red rose lovers' lips have kissed 
And left to fade — 

Good-bye, good-bye. 

Good-bye, Summer, with your memories dear. 
Your close hand-clasp, your tender smile ; 
Your ghost will walk full many a mile 

With us throughout the years — 

Good-bye, good-bye. 

7 89 



SONG 

LOVE lingers by with song and sigh, 
Shine and shadows bending ; 
The days so rare that started fair 
Oft in sadness ending. 

Love comes and goes as blooms the rose, 

Leaving thorns behind it, 
But, ah, the gain outlasts the pain 

If so our hearts may find it. 

A gift is life, its peace and strife 
And all the hope that's in it ; 

Love lies across the bridge of sighs 
And we'd risk heaven to win it. 



OUT OF THE PAST 

WHEN, wrapped in twilight folds, you put away 
Within Time's darkened niche the worn-out day, 
Say not that it is dead. 
It may seem cold and still and very white — 
A pallor on the edge of endless night, 
A blur of nothingness, 
A silence deep and dread. 

And yet if in that day you lived a lie, 
Or shamed a faith, or put a suppliant by, 
Or wronged a child of God, 
90 



From out the shrouding shadows grim and black 
Of some long after-year, it will reach back 
Its phantom hands of pain 
And smite you with its rod. 



H 



THE KING 

(DECEMBER 24) 
E does not come to those who hoard 



Their bounty in their own four walls, 
Who spend upon themselves and theirs. 
Nor hear the hungry, outside calls — 
The King who comes tonight. 

He comes instead to those who share 

Their crusts or gold with pain and need ; 

He has no key to unlock breasts 

Grown rusty through their selfish greed — 
The King who comes tonight. 

This is His feast ; he bids the guests 
Who gather with him at the board. 

He only asks if we have served 

His poor — their hope and faith restored — 
The King who comes tonight. 

As in the muted viol sleeps the song, 

As in the opal burns the flame. 
So in the heart swept clean of self 

There lies the wonder of his name--^ 
The King who comes tonight. 

91 



OUR FLAG 

(JUNE 14) 

FURTHER than Roman eagles flew 
When Rome ruled all the world, 
From rise to set of distant suns 
Our banner is unfurled. 

Fierce tempests sweeping from the North 

Baptize it with their snows ; 
The South wind softly sings to it 

The love song of the rose ; 

And winds of East meet winds of West 
Where high against the sky 

It leans to watch, o'er land and sea. 
The drifting years go by. 

Handwriting on the changing clouds 

Its colors gleam above ; 
The red for war, the white for peace. 

The blue for truth and love. 

And, ah, its stars, its steadfast stars — 
A star for each proud state ! 

They are the sleepless guardian eyes 
That read the book of fate. 

We fear no f oeman far or near. 

No hour of black despair. 
While over us the nation's flag 

Hangs like a floating prayer. 
92 



COLUMBIA'S TOLL 

(JUNE 5, 1917) 

IN the wilderness where Sinai 
Looked away o'er shifting sand 
And the Red Sea spent its thunder 
God gave Moses this command : 

" Number all the people for me, 
List them by each tribal name — 

All the men from twenty upward 
For my warrior host I claim. 

" All the youngest and the strongest — 
They are mine by my decree ; 

Set their standards where they gather — 
They shall fight to make men free." 

Thus in that far day was taken 
That first count of men of war, 

In the desert 'neath the shadow 
Of the Mountain of the Law. 

****** 

Now, through eons comes the echo 

Of that old Mosaic quest — 
Voice of our loved country calling: 

" Give me share of all your best — 

" Count me out a Guard of Honor, 
Young of heart and legions long, 

Men who'll dare the heights of danger 
Singing clear my Freedom song — 
93 



" Men who'll set my unstained standard 
Where the victory beacons glance 

In that parliament of banners 

On the reddened fields of France — 

''Men who'll fight for equal justice 
And the brotherhood it brings 

'Till, upon each trodden people, 
Falls the twilight of the kings. 

" Falls that twilight, and the burden 
Of the tyrants' rule shall cease, 

And the hilltops of the nations 
Whiten with the dawn of peace. 

" Count me out this Guard of Honor 
From your bravest and your best, 

Number them as God commanded 
In the old Mosaic quest." 



So we take that toll of manhood, 

Counting out our brave and strong- 
Take them to your heart, Columbia, 
They will sing your Freedom Song ! 



94 



THE SERVICE FLAG 

BORDER of red for a courage high — 
Courage that's staunch and true, 
With a field of white for purity, 

Where the name-stars glimmer blue — 
Blue for the man who lives and serves. 

Where echo the fierce war cries. 
But gold for the one who gives his life 
And dies as a hero dies. 

In windows of shops whence the men went out, 

The signal is flung to fate 
In windows of homes whence the sons went forth, 

And the mothers who gave them wait — 
Sired of the nation's Stars and Stripes, 

It tells how a man may fight 
And give his blood and his life, perchance, 

For the things that are true and right. 

Border of red for a courage high — 

Courage that's staunch and true. 
With a field of white for purity — 

Where the name-stars glimmer blue — 
God grant that our men come home again 

Out of war's furious hold ; 
God grant that the blue stars on the flag 

Change not to the stars of gold ! 



95 



TO OUR SOLDIERS 

(We who are to be left behind, salute you) 

WE may not pause to take your hand 
When passing in a crowd, 
We may not whisper words of cheer 
Or speak our thoughts aloud. 

For no salute is given us, 

No formal martial sign 
That signals to the heart of you 

Along some unseen line. 

But think not that our silence means 

A dearth of tender care; 
We meet you face to face, O lads. 

And pass you with a prayer — 

A prayer that leaves our souls aglow 
With pride that such things be — 

That men like you will pledge their lives 
For peace and liberty. 

We greet you " heroes," every one, 

For you there is no " fail " ; 
You saw the torch that Freedom lit 

And followed in its trail ; 

If so you fight on land or sea 

Or strive where eagles call. 
We pass you, praying silently : 

GOD BLESS YOU, ONE AND ALL! 

96 



CLANCY AT VIMY RIDGE 

("W. C. Clancy, a Texas lad who had enlisted with the Canadians, 
on learning that the United States had declared war on Germany- 
tied a flag to his bayonet and charged up Vimy Ridge with his 
command. He fell, wounded, but not fatally.) 

THEY charged the foe up Vimy Ridge 
That sun-scorched day, 
And though the flag of France flew free 
Where all the battling hosts could see, 
Yet up the reddening slope of death 
Old Glory led the way. 

A Texas lad heard our decree : 

"We fight with France." 

" Then this leads in the van," he cried. 

And to his bayonet's point he tied 

The Stars and Stripes, as knight of old 
Might wreathe his lance. 

And up the slippery slope he sprang — 

No stay or stop. 
Though f oeman's shells rained thick and fast 
And all of hell was in the blast 
And he was blind with wounds and blood 

He reached the top ! 

His comrades cheered ; but higher yet, 
Above the shell-fire's glow. 

There watched, as from Fame's sentry post. 

Another band — that splendid host 

That held, on Texas' deathless day, 
The Alamo! 
97 



They crowded from the vast Unknown 
Heroes of long told story — 
To witness where the war gods strive, 
How Texas Clancy kept alive 

The flame of Texas' glory ! 



THE CALL TO THE COLORS 

LIKE the seeds of wind-flowers, lightly blown 
On vagrant, gypsying breeze. 
They are scattered wide throughout our land — 

Aliens from over the seas. 
They came from the crowded fatherlands 

To share in our broader sphere, 
And they built their nests and reared their broods 
Through many a changing year. 

But a vibrant cry comes unaware 

From over the crested wave — 
The voice of the warring motherlands 

Calling their children to save : 
" On our grain-grown fields War plants its guns 

And lights its torch on the crag ; 
We need you, sons in the Other Lands, 

Come back and fight for the flag ! " 

And deep in each listener's heart there stirs 

A memory that has slept 
'Neath blush of blossom and pallor of snows 

While the years have onward crept ; 
98 



And he sees in a flash his native hut, 

Where the foeman's banners float — 

And he's German again, or French, or Slav 
At thrill of a bugle note ! 

For a man may wander across the world 

And dwell 'neath a stranger's sky. 
But the call of the blood will cleave all space 

When it comes in a battle cry ; 
And the nest he built and the brood he reared 

Are left to an alien flag 
While he turns him home, with his soul aflame. 

To die for a silken rag. 



INTERNED 

BY cable held and promise bound 
Far from the vasty deep. 
We who were free as sea birds fly 

Our sullen vigil keep. 
Unplumed of smoke our funnels rust. 

No pulse our engines know. 
And keels that j oy ed to cut the wave 
Rock idly to and fro. 

Outside, beyond the harbor's mouth, 
The surge of war goes by, 

But here within this prison-hold 
Only the curlews cry. 

99 



And ripples that a child might brave 
Creep softly past, and mock 

Our grim black hulls that tamed the tides 
And braved the tempest's shock. 

Fierce vultures of the sea we sailed 

And ran our quarries down, 
And dropped them to the silent caves 

Where sleep the hordes who drown. 
But now — weak, crippled, cabled things 

Reft of our cruel might, 
We curse at grating chains and yearn 

For one more chance to fight. 



MARYS AT THE CROSS 

(SEPTEMBER, 1917) 

THE place where Mary-Mother knelt 
Before the cross 
Is worn with touch of many knees 
Through all the crawling centuries 
Of pain and grief and loss. 

Low bent, she lifted up her eyes, 

All unafraid. 
To that dear face grown white and cold, 
And yet — we are not even told 

That Mary prayed. 

100 



But, oh, her knees pressed hard, so hard 

The rugged stone. 
The call of sacrifice rang in her soul, 
And she gave back, at that high goal. 

To God what was His own. 



No age has missed its Calvary. 

Today the guns 
Of ruthless war blaze through the land 
And to the mothers send command : 

" Give us your sons ! " 

And, oh, the Marys that creep close 

To that still cross 
And kneel where Mary-Mother knelt. 
And know the agony she felt 

Of bitter pain and loss ! 

O many mothers, kneeling there. 

Your crucial hour has come — 
You pray, your hearts grief -torn and wild. 
That God will spare to you your child ! 
But — Mary's lips were dumb. 

Dumb, for she knew that was the end. 

But YOU may pray — 
(Wear smooth the stones beneath your knees !) 
Since from the storm and roar and wrack 
Of war YOUR sons may yet come back — 

O Marys at the cross today ! 
101 



SWEETHEART KNITTERS 

DEMURE as though they had stepped from 
Grandmas' daguerreotypes, 
They sit and knit, these modern maids 

(Those old dames' prototypes), 
Catching the stitch and casting the thread, 

Making some man their debtor, 
Working as long as the daylight lasts, 
Knitting a sweetheart sweater. 

The needles flash with an amber glint 

In the soft yam, silver gray, 
While the eyes above shine with a dream 

We call " some far, sweet day " — 
Round and round with " ribbing " that's taut, 

To tick of the midnight clock. 
Tangled hearts in the unwound skein, 

Knitting a sweetheart sock. 

Widening for shoulder or for chest, 

" Perling " and wiping a tear, 
Kissing the stitches above the heart. 

With a prayer that God be near — 
While the needles fly in the olive yarn. 

Forging a soldier's fetters, 
For they knit and knit, these patriot dames, 

Sweetheart socks and sweaters ! 



lOS 



'SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 

AN English church : and a sad-eyed girl 
Kneels down as the days depart : 
" He is but one in that battling host, 
But, Lord, he's heart of my heart — 
Keep him for me ! " 

And " somewhere in France " a wooden cross 

With the Verdun guns in view, 
And the epitaph : " Ici repos 

Un soldat Anglais inconnu — 
Priez pour lui." 

And the English girl and the wooden cross 
Keep watch 'neath the steadfast stars. 

Oh, does the Lord God rule the world. 
Or the scepter of red Mars 

That such things be? 



THE ANSWER 

(LIBERTY BOND, OCT., 1917) 

WHAT am I ? Listen : Where the ships. 
Unwarned, go down as seas swirl green 
And scattered corpses strew the tides, 
I am — O ye who mourn the lost — 
The ?iU§wer to the submarine. 
103 



Where Belgium's children sob and moan 
'Neath heavy hand of German foe, 

'And starve and sicken day by day, 

I am — mothers and fathers, hearken well- 
I am the answer to their woe ! 

Where fire and sword have swept the land 
Down where the Serbian shadows fall. 

And men are butchered like the beasts, 
I am — O hearts with pity filled — 
I am the answer to their call. 

Where ravished girls and women lift 
Their helpless pleading hands on high 

'Neath skies of Flanders or of France, 

I am — O women, women, everywhere — 
I am the answer to their cry ! 

I am the answer unto these. 

For gold can reach beyond the sea 

And bind the demons war has loosed. 
I am America's strong arm — 
I am the Bond of Liberty ! 



104 



ALLENBY 

(JERUSALEM, 1917) 

HUSH ! over the Citj of David 
A silence seems to fall, 
And down the long sealed ages 

There comes a far, clear call: 
"ALLENBY, conqueror, hero!" 

He comes in Christian state ; 
Uncovered and reverend, he enters 
Through the Holy City's gate. 

Never a cannon has thundered 

'Gainst the haunts that men revere — 
The Sepulchre, hallowed and holy, 

Golgotha, Gethsemane drear ; 
He has won them, this new crusader, 

With never a battle scar. 
And he sets in the place of the crescent 

The Christian's risen Star. 

And high on the heights of the eons 

There watches a serried host — 
Those who conquered the city 

Far back in the ages lost. 
There Shishak of Egypt frowns darkly 

Toi see where his warriors trod. 
And Nebuchadnezzar remembers 

How he pillaged the City of God. 

105 



There are Persian and Greek and Roman 

Who held Jerusalem fief 
Till out of the mists of the morning 

Came the spears of the Moslem chief 
And Omar was lord and ruler. 

Then the red Crusaders came, 
And Godfrey de Bouillon lifted 

The city's Mohammedan shame. 

But there in the shadow behind him 

Stands Sal-adin, robed in state, 
And he scowls at the modem Moslem 

Who yielded the city's gate. 
And so on the heights of the eons 

Are gathered the clustered spears 
Of the long procession of captors 

Gone down with the vanished years. 

And over the City of Jesus 

That silence seems to fall. 
For never a pagan captor 

Cheers with a ghastly call; 
But surely that faint, weird music 

Stirring the city's vast throng 
Is Allenby's greeting of glory 

From David's harp of song ! 



106 



THE FLAG IN THE CHURCH 

DOWN the wide aisle, with measured tread, 
The white-robed singers stepped, 
And up to rafters lost in gloom 

The pealing music swept. 
The Cross of Christ led on before 

High up, where all could see. 
And close behind in rippled waves 
The flag of Liberty. 

Up to the altar rails they went, 

Those emblems, side by side — 
Our pledge of faith to Calvary, 

Our country's symbolled pride. 
And instantly a vision came 

Through centuries of night 
When red Crusaders strove with Turks 

And won the furious fight, 

And in the captured city set — 

Before the altars there — 
Their standards stained with Moslem blood, 

And bent their heads in prayer. 
Their mailed knees touched the rugged stones. 

Then swords flashed bright and high, 
" Our banner and the Crucifix ! " 

Went up their battle cry. 

They have been comrades since that time ; 

Through all the centuries 
The flag has battled for the Cross 

In earth's Gethsemanes. 
107 



And so we set them side by side 
Where God's own angels throng, 

The Cross above the unfurled flag, 
Baptized with glorious song. 



GOOD WISHES 

(OUR LADS IN KHAKI) 

LIKE the Wise Men out of the East, I send 
As precious gift three wishes true, 
And straight as a homing dove they go 
From the heart of Me 

To the heart of You. 

One wish for Joy, one for Good Will, 
And one for Peace where'er you be ; 
And they fly on the silken wings of Love 
To the heart of You 

From the heart of Me ! 



IN FRANCE 

WE knew not when your ships set sail ; 
All silently they shpped away 
Through moonless night or rift of day, 
With whispering winds or toss of gale — 
Their prows forever to the east. 
108 



We held our peace ; our hearts obeyed 
That one out-given word 
Of " silence " all the nation heard. 
We watched each sun and dumbly prayed 
For you " somewhere " in God's great world. 

And while we prayed, you reached your goal, 
You heard the echo of a cry : 
" We helped you — ^help us ere we die ! " 
And once again, no stint of dole, 
France gives you lilies of her love. 

With her you stand and look away 

To that far line 

Where banners shine 
Like blossomed petals of the day 
Breaking the sepals of the night. 

And what you see ? Not death, O men, 

But Glory's face 

In that lone place ; 
And you give back its smile, as when 
Your mother calls you softly home — 
O our brave sons in far-off France ! 



109 



''KRIEG 1ST KRIEG'' 

** "¥"TTAR is war ; " that is the Prussian's oath, 
V V The alpha and omega of his creed. 
All that is best of earth goes down, 

Sucked in by his devouring greed. 
There is no whisper in his inmost soul 

Of paths that love and trust have trod. 
There is no virtue that he will not foul. 
In temple walls he sees no God. 

Remorseless as the Moloch of old days, 

He crushes what he cannot use — 
Not that he cared, but, in his fiendish hate. 

That those who cherished it may lose. 
His dream is cruelty, his hand is steel ; 

With devils from all depths he is in league 
To gain the goal his ruthless lust has set. 

And justifies himself with : " Krieg its Krieg." 

Yea ; war IS war, but all humanity 

Owes to itself to keep aglow 
The Christ-spark 'neath the reddened shield of Mars, 

The mercy-torch that shows the bleeding foe. 
For men may fight and keep their faith in God — 

Such strife has been since Cain's red birth ; 
But Prussian creeds blow out the altar lights — 

War is NOT war, but HELL ON EARTH ! 



110 



MME. CATHERINE BRESH- 
KOVSKAYA 

("Grandmother of the Russian Revolution" has spent 50 of her 
74 years in prison) 

YOU think— 
With needles glancing through the yam 
Or stitching endlessly a seam 

In tender loyalty, 
Or that you bought a bond to help 
Let loose the nation's golden stream — 
You think with these that you have done 
Your "bit "for Liberty? 

Then what of her — Breshkovskaya — 
That broken, white-haired Russian dame 

Who, half a century 
Groveled in dungeons of her land 
Because for Russia she dared claim. 
From scourging hand and iron heel. 

That same sweet Liberty? 

Not hers to knit nor hers to sew 
For those who guarded Russia's path 

To make her people free. 
Her youth went out in prison blight. 
Her soul was bruised with royal wrath, 
The suns and stars of fifty years 

She did not see. 

Ill 



And yet her courage never failed. 
When revolution broke her bars 

And she was free, 
She came forth in the glorious light 
And showed her hands, all seamed with scars. 
And turned her face up to the stars 
And cried : " I fed, through all the years. 

On hope of Liberty ! " 

She did her "bit" with bar and bolt. 
Mayhap with lash, and yet — and yet 

The world her smile may see ! 
She wakes us up to higher things. 
She shows us heights our hearts forget. 
She shames us into sacrifice 

For home and Liberty ! 

''NO MAN'S LAND'' 

BETWEEN the hostile trenches where 
The fight rocks to and fro — 
A narrow strip where frenzied hosts 
No quarter give or know 

It lies — this rendezvous of death 
Called " No Man's Land." 

The men drop in their own red blood 

Beyond their comrades' reach. 
Or dead, or torn with shot and shell 
In agony that passes speech 

And shames the savage age of old. 
In " No Man's Land." 
112 



Back in the trenches strong men rave 

To hear the helpless cries, 
But none may venture forth to save 
E'en when a brother dies 

Upon that awful slaughter-sod 
Of " No Man's Land." 

The wounded, mid the stench of death, 

Shriek out their curse or prayer. 
And writhe and thirst and curse and die 
And rot in wind-rows there, 
For barbarism is the creed 
Of " No Man's Land." 

They call it well, for human heart 

No rood of it would claim. 
The devils of inferno hold 
The fief in blood and shame. 
And hell is but another name 
For " No Man's Land." 



RED CROSS 

(Florence Nightingale did her mission of nursing before the in- 
stitution of the Red Cross order; but she lived an invalid long 
years after its organization and was no doubt deeply interested 
in it.) 

SPIRIT of Florence Nightingale 
Bending where red shells rain, 
'Twas you who blazed the mercy path 
Across the battle plain. 
113 



Soul of you, Clara Barton, shrined 

Where demon hatreds pressed, 
We see you 'gainst the rolling smoke, 

The Red Cross on your breast. 

Before that symbol vengeance stops. 

And love dares show its face, 
Molochs of carnage know it for 

Sign-manual of God's grace. 

'Twill go down through the un-dawned years 

From time's abyss unfurled. 
The pledge of those who light the torch 

Of mercy for the world. 

Where war's red banners fill the sky 

Are spread its tents of peace, 
Where famine walks or floods sweep down 

It brings its own surcease. 

Where east runs west and south climbs north. 

In calm or tempest's breath. 
Armies of Red Cross wearers hold 

The gates twixt life and death. 



114 



WORKING FOR THE RED CROSS 

THE room is long and wide ; the hum 
Of quick machines is on the air ; 
And a babel soft of many tongues, 

And smiles and whispered words are there 
In that long room. 

For at the tables and the whirring wheels 

Are women, sewing deft and swift. 
The things a wounded soldier needs 

When caught to life from death's dark drift, 
Flotsam of war. 

They come of sires of olden bloody wars. 

These sewers in the summer sun ; 
Through generations long since dead 

Their strain of ancestry has run 
On History's page. 

Here sit, in quiet groups, " Colonial Dames," 

Plying their needles while they tell 
Ancestral stories of fierce Indian strife. 

And how was brought, through chaos dark as hell. 
The nation's soul. 

And there the D. A. R.'s knit on and on, 

And blend a record with the thread 
Of how grim Revolution shook the hills 
And trampled fields were stained with red 
Of their brave sires. 
115 



Here, too, are gray-haired women looking back 
At wavering lines of Blue and Gray ; 

They stitch into each garment's hem 
Pale memories of that vanished day, 
And kiss each seam. 

And these — these other women grave of face, 
Folding the "dressings," lined and pressed? 

These are the mothers of the men 
Gone forth upon the new war quest 
Where Freedom calls — 

The brave, proud mothers and the " best beloved " 

Of all the gallant men they spare ; 
They leave a blessing in each fold 

And sew in every seam a prayer 

That peace may come. 



So here in this long room are gathered up 
The threads that spin the martial creed 

Our country holds ; and here there brood 
The spirit-wings that patriots need 
Of love and faith. 

The needles stop, the swift wheels softly whirr, 

The sun goes golden to the west ; 
The Red Cross workers fold the garments by : 

God keep each wearer safe and blest — 
That is our prayer. 



116 



" THE SOUL OF GERMANY" 

THE soul of Germany ! How fair it shone 
Once in the eyes of all the world, 
Soaring in upward flight to sunlit heights, 
Its glancing pinions wide unfurled. 

The soul of Germany was Wagner, Bach ; 

Was Mozart singing to the stars, 
Was Goethe opening vistas bright with dreams, 

Was Schiller letting down the day-spring's bars- 
Was Heine calling through the paling night — 

Holbein and Hofman with uplifted brush, 
Or Gluck's or great Beethoven's wonder touch 

Sonorous in the throbbing hush. 

These and their kindred Genii were the soul 

Of Germany before there fell 
Upon her that fierce Hohenzollern blight 

With lust of power and scorch of hell — 

Her soul before her war-crazed men forgot 
The heights for which her " science " stood — 

Her soul before her unshamed women went 
"Conscript" to unwed motherhood. 

But now, where Schumann sang the despot rules, 
Sordid with hate the land that Handel knew — 

The " soul " of Germany takes far its flight 

And vultures wheel where once its radiance flew ! 
117 



GUYNEMER 

(Guynemer, the famous French aviator, is said to have brought 
down the unprecedented number of 52 enemy airplanes before 
he was himself killed. The French people have asked that he be 
buried in the Pantheon, or Church of St. Genevieve, where are the 
tombs of many illustrious Frenchmen, and over the doors of which 
is carved the line: " Au grandes hommes la patrie reconnaissante.") 

YEA, bury him in the Pantheon, 
Where the great of his land are sleeping ; 
A niche inside will open wide 
To take him to its keeping. 

For he fought for France high over the fields 

Wine-red with revel of Mars, 
Bore her lilied flag o'er the cloudy crag 

To blossom against the stars. 

For, eagle of heart and eagle of eye. 

He flew the heights of the skies. 
And he dared the Hun in shadow or sun, 

And he died as a warrior dies. 

Yea, bury him where, o'er the portals high 

Is graven the tender story 
How France will keep, through the centuries' sweep. 

The ashes of his glory ! 



118 



THE STAR OVER THE TRENCH 

WAR and ruin and lust of blood, 
And the world gone mad, gone mad ; 
And the cry of hate and the call to kill, 
And only the death fiends glad ! 

Volley of shells and toss of flame 

And a roar like snarl of hell. 
And out of the pit of the sulphur fumes 

The rasp of a dying yell. 

War and ruin and lust of blood 

And heaven so far, so far. 
Then — out of the ruck of the rolling-smoke 

Rises the Christmas Star. 

Over the trenches running red 

Its tender radiance streams, 
And the hearts of men are turned from strife 

To the old familiar dreams. 

And they know that out of this horror of hate 

There must one day come release, 
And a whisper of hope is on the wind 

And the Star is the herald of Peace. 

War and ruin and lust of blood 

And heaven so far, so far — 
But a steadfast faith that God is God 

Shines in the risen Star ! 
119 



F 



THANKSGIVING 

(NOVEMBER, 1917) 

OR what shall we give thanks, Lord God of Hosts? 
For this — for this : 



That we were born into this wonder time 

That sees the death throes of world-slavery, 
And that we stand amid the bannered hosts 

And bear an unsheathed sword for Liberty — 
Thank God that we were sired AMERICANS, 

Shrived of ignoble taint of cowardice. 
And that our blood, through easeful years, ne'er ran 

Thin with the craven fear of sacrifice. 

For what shall we give thanks, Lord God of Hosts? 
For this — for this : 

That we are brave with truth, not barbarous ; 

That in our hearts and souls there doth abide 
The vision of the Nazarene, 

His thorn-crowned head and spear-pierced side — 
Thank God that on the bloodiest battlefield 

Where Death has harvested and Glory gleans. 
Holding us fast to ancient faiths and creeds. 

The Cross of Calvary forever leans ! 

For this we give thee thanks. Lord God of Hosts, 
For this — for this. 



lao 



THOSE FAR OFF GRAVES 

DEAD ! our gallant sons who went to fight 
Along that far-flung battle line 
Where lights of Glory ever shine 
Like beckoning signals through the night, 
And Valor counts the toll. 

Asleep forever 'neath the skies 

Of foreign lands, and yet we feel — 
Though long sea leagues between us reel — 

The self-same stars above us rise, 
Watching all silently. 

It matters not if o'er those graves 
The golden gorse of Scotland grows 
Or France her lilied symbol shows, 

For Victory's unseen banner waves 
Its answer to the stars. 

And in our souls is this clear creed : 

That God knows where our dead are laid ! 
And we wait on, all unafraid. 

For in His love He has decreed 
That Fame will not forget. 



121 



''WAR BABIES'' 

*' ^"TTAR babies " — term so pitiful 

W It fills the eyes with sting of tears ; 
Not all the accusing epithets 

Of time we call the Christian years 
Seems half so sorrowful. 

And yet — it is their rightful name, 

Though not because Mars held his shield 

And 'neath its shadow they were sired 
'Mid all the din of tented field ' 
And heart-break of the strife. 

Not this the reason, no. But, ah ! 

More sad than this a hundred fold — 
"War babies," since the ones who gave them life, 

The men and women who should hold 
To God's clear-written law 

Made war on righteousness, and beat 

Down in the dust the law divine 
Of wedlock first, and in its stead 

Set up the pagan-passion sign 
Of free love and its bitter fruit. 

"War babies"— "Thousands of them.?" 
Not once has time's long record shown 
Wholesale arraignment such as this 
Of womanhood ; nor has been known 
Such breakdown of morality. 
1S2 



" War babies ? " Yea ; but war against 
Those high decrees of truth and right 

That hold the world at even poise — ^base war 
In which there was no spirit fight 
Against the hosts of hell. 



IN MEXICO 

ONCE more our battle banners fly 
Their signals 'neath the Mexic sky, 
Breeze-rippled in the sun ; 
Once more war's purple pageantry 
Flames to a heart of mystery 
With laurels to be won. 

The years are many since Scott's host 
Stormed home the Cerro-Gordo post 

Rock-ribbed and bleached with snow, 
And then from steeps where falls the light- 
The conquered Churubuscan height — 

Looked off toward Mexico. 

The years are many since, with tread 
That shook the Aztec heart with dread, 

Our martial legions stood 
In Montezuma's storied hall 
And raised the thrilling victory call 

That stirs e'en sluggard blood. 
123 



The years are many — aye, three score — 
Since these things were, and now once more 

(There seems naught else to choose) 
Our unfurled martial banners fly 
Where broods the blue-gold tropic sky 

O'er gun-girt Vera Cruz. 

Mars wears his helmet plumed in red. 
And men see Glory's laurels spread 

By trails of long ago ; 
While women, clothed in silk or rag, 
Pray for their lovers and their flag 

Way down in Mexico ! 



GOOD BYE, SWEETHEARTS 

(JUNE, 1916) 

BACK with your shields, O khaki lads, 
O laddies brave and true; 
You'll find the " girls you left behind" 
Still waiting here for you. 

Upon the far-flung cactus plain 
The Stars and Stripes unbind, 

And let the Eagle of the North 
Scream down the Mexic wind. 

Wake up the echoes of the south 

With " Tennessee's " fair name ; 

She puts into your strong, young hands 
The record of her fame, 



And sends you forth to keep undimmed 

Amid the clouds of war 
Her symbol on your banner bright — 

Her white and steadfast star. 

We'll watch for you beside the trails, 
Where Glory keeps her score ; 

O khaki lads, our hearts would break 
If you came back no more ! 

Would break, except we'd know the few 
Left 'neath the Aztec skies 

Had shown the whole, wide martial world 
The way a hero dies. 

But you'll come back, O khaki lads, 
And bring your shining shields. 

And tell the girls how 'twas y»u fought 
And won on glory's fields ! 



HEART O' THE WORLD 

HEART o' the world, heart o' the world, 
O France, 
You hold it in your hollowed palm ; 
It came on roar of battle blast 

Singing the great Homeric psalm. 

There England lays her scented rose, 
There Afric's golden sands are poured, 

And India, mystic of the age. 

Gives of the splendor of her hoard. 
125 



There Canada that sleeps in snow 
Has left red drops of patriot blood, 

And far Australia sent her gift of faith 
Across three oceans' rolling flood. 

And there we went ; our far-flung flags 
Gleaned all the winds for songs of love, 

Our shield, undented and unstained. 
We hold your bleeding breast above. 

For with its throbbing pledge of peace. 
With all its radiant hope unfurled. 

You hold it like a captured bird — 
Heart o' the world, O France, 

Heart o' the world ! 



GOING TO FRANCE 

I HOLD his hand and look into his eyes — 
My son grown to a man ; 
The gulf of time back to his babyhood 
My swift thoughts span. 

I reared him to his splendid youth, 
Playing my game with Chance, 

And now — dear Lord, hold close my faith! 
He goes away to France. 

I know that France is fair and wide, 

A land of wonder dreams. 
But just an altar white and cold 

Unto my soul it seems — 

126 



An altar of high sacrifice 

For hearts like mine, 
And, as God's stars in far-off space, 

Its tapers shine. 

And on that altar there are laid — 
Through tears that blind — 

A million sacrificial hearts 
Of mothers left behind. 

And so it is I hold his hand 

And lift up prayerful eyes 
That God will save my boy from share 

In that great sacrifice. 



MAY-TIME 

'rinlS May-time here in our own fields, 

I The blue birds sing all day, 
But — 'tis hiss of shot and snap of shell 
For those we've sent away; 

For the May-time is a battle time. 

And far across the sea 
Our men will keep their tryst with death 
Or win for Liberty ! 

'Tis May-time in the London lanes, 

Where blossoms softly nod, 
But — ^'tis fight-time on the Flanders front. 

Where souls go home to God ; 
127 



For the May-time is a bloody time, 
Where fierce the hot hail sweeps, 

And COURAGE at the gates of hell 
Its steadfast vigil keeps! 

'Tis May-time in the Paris parks, 

The shadows fleck the grass. 
But — 'tis " stand and die " in Picardy 
With cry : " You shall not pass ! " 

For the May-time it is death time. 
Where the lilied banners shine. 
And, oh! 'tis VALOR'S Golden Age 
Down all that gun-swept line! 



LA FAYETTE, WE HAVE COME! 

(PERSHING AT LA FAYETTE'S TOMB) 

AND they are there, O valiant France, 
Our bravest and our best, 
To hold their unstained shields before 

Your torn and bleeding breast. 
They went to you, as long ago 
You came, a bannered host. 
To help us guard the swinging gates 
Of our own Freedom-post. 

And now the Hun is at your door 

In furious serried mass, 
They speed your splendid challenge on 

And cry : " You shall not pass ! " 
128 



They'll keep with you the trails of death 
Till f oemen's guns are dumb ; 

Their blood shall stain your lilied-sod — 
" La Fayette, they have come ! " 



THE CALL TO PRAYER 

(By direction of the rector. Dr. W. D. Buckner, the bell of Cal- 
vary Church is rung every day at 12 o'clock as a call to prayer for 
our soldiers.) 

THE city teems with life ; the sun, 
A golden globe swings high 
Where breaks the noon, and in the streets 

Is jar of traffic passing by. 
Then suddenly above the throng 

A bell rings deep and clear, 
A drifting wave of melody 

That sweeps now far, now near. 

" Lift up your hearts ! Lift up your hearts ! " 

(The spoken words seem there), 
" To Him who guards our battle front ; 

Lift up your hearts in prayer. 
Pray hard that o'er our men who fight 

On Freedom's blood-stained field 
Today the Lord of Hosts may hold 

The shelter of His shield." 

And on the crowded thoroughfares 

Men bow their heads a space, 
And every woman, at her task. 

Lifts up a reverent face. 
1^9 



A hush for just one fleeting breath 

Falls where the toilers plod 
As prayerful thoughts and whispered words 

Go winging up to God. 



The golden sun slips o'er the line, 

The high noon hour is past, 
The roar of traffic fills the wind. 

The sky is lone and vast. 
A thousand hearts are thrilled and stirred 

As silence settles where — 
Muezzin of the Christian tower — 

The bell has called to prayer. 



WHEN THE BUGLES BLOW 

WHAT do you hear when the bugles blow — 
When the bugles blow? 
Is it only a thread of silver sound 
Out of the throat of the silence wound, 
Waking an echo's far rebound 

That throbs when the bugles blow ? 

Is that what you catch when the bugles blow — 

When the bugles blow? 
Or is it a long dead warrior's cry, 
Filling the cup of the hollow sky. 
Bidding you follow the flag and die 

In Freedom's van when the bugles blow? 
130 



That IS the call that stirs the soul 

When the bugles blow. 
For high on the heights of destiny, 
With promise of immortality, 
The voice of a winged Victory 

Sings clear when the bugles blow. 

And we spring to follow the unfurled flag 

When the bugles blow — 
Follow it far, where our comrades fell — 
Follow through red of the battle's swell — 
Follow it up to the gates of hell — 

Storming its depths — when the bugles blow. 



TRANSFORMATION 

WE pass along the city streets, 
Oppressed with sense of change; 
The pavements seem so gray and lone. 

The comers dull and strange. 
And then we realize that what 
We miss these summer noons 
Are " shrieking " shirts and " passion " sox 
Of by-gone yester-Junes. 

And suddenly it comes to us. 

Decreed by martial law, 
The boys who were our " j elly-beans " 

Have gone away to war. 
131 



Have gone away, and ah ! it stirs 

And quickens all our blood 
To know their trainers say of them : 

" The lads are making good." 

The boys who laughed and loafed and smoked 

And danced the jazz-time rag 
Are serving Uncle Sam today 

As soldiers of the flag. 
The " shrieking " shirt's a khaki blouse, 

The SOX of riot hue 
Are woolen gray, and lose themselves 

In wide-toed army shoe. 

The heads are up, the shoulders square ; 

They walk with martial swing — 
You had not dreamed a " Willy-boy " 

Could bloom to such a thing. 
The one-time pasty skins are seared 

With coat of ocre tan ; 
Hats off ! and see a " jelly-bean " 

Evolve into a man ! 

And when the war is done and they 

Come marching home to us. 
You wager both your blooming eyes 

We're going to make a fuss. 
And shout until our throats are hoarse 

For every transformed lad 
Who went away in screaming clothes 

And comes back khaki clad ! 
132 



THAT BAY OF DAYS 

WHEN you come home ! O son of mine, 
How throb the words deep in my heart ! 
I shake hke leaf tossed in the wind 
And leave the crowd and stand apart 

To curb the joy-cry on my whitened lips — 

When you come home! 

When you come home ! Before mine eyes 

That picture swims in misty lines, 
Through half -shut lids and haze of tears 
The glory of your presence shines, 

And in my throat is strangle of deep prayers 

Of gratitude. 

When you come home ! My knees bend low, 

I strive God's guiding hand to see 
And lean hard on His mercy arm — 
When you come home, oh, may it be 

As straight and beautiful as you went forth. 

Like knight of old. 

And yet, and yet when you come home. 
If you are blind or limp with crutch, 
It will not matter to my heart — 
I shall but love you over much 

For your brave sacrifice ; my one fierce prayer 
Is but to hold you in my arms 

When you come home. 



133 



THE KNITTERS 

THEY sit in circles or they draw apart, 
Each following the dictates of her heart 
For comradeship or solitude; 
And in the yam that's blue or drab or gray 
The shining needles flash the livelong day 
Knitting, knitting. 

Knitting soldier things. 

They are the women whom you left behind, 
O soldier lads, the women brave and kind 

Whose thoughts spin with the somber yam 
And race the wind for many a changing mile 
To catch, in memory, your goodbye smile — 

Knitting, knitting, 

Knitting soldier things. 

And, oh, the hopes that bead the thread with gold. 
And, oh, the tears as old as time is old 

That gather slow and fall unseen ! 
For, soldier lads, their yearning hearts are where 
You fight in France, their every breath a prayer — 

Knitting, knitting. 

Knitting soldier things. 



134 



''LET US PRAT'' 

FATHER, listen — bend your head : 
Where the trampled fields bloom red 
With the chrism of our faith — 
Blood that courage freely gives 
And the soul of Freedom lives — 
They are fighting, our brave men. 

Father, hear us while we pray ! 
Shelter each dear head this day. 

Guard each arm that strikes a blow. 
Each one there, each tender lad 
Is as great Sir Galahad 

Fighting for the cause of truth — 

Each one there, each valiant one 
Is some mother's brave, bright son ; 

Keep him, God for her dear sake ; 
Let her winging prayer to Thee 
Aegis for her warrior be. 

Shielding him against the Hun. 

Father, in the battle's rush 
If there comes a sudden hush 

They will hear and feel our prayer. 
They will know, on bended knee. 
We are holding tryst with Thee, 
Praying with our every breath : 

Keep them. Lord of Hosts. Amen. 

135 



QUEEN OF SONGS 

THEY sang the new songs when they marched- 
That Scotch and EngHsh host — 
Down through the blossomed fields of France 

Where stalked war's haggard ghost. 
The new songs and the lilting airs 

Of dance-halls left behind, 

And rag-time of the cabarets 

Filled every drifting wind. 

But in the trenches, watching foes 

As lions watch their quarry, 
They sang with serious lips and eyes 

The old song, "Annie Laurie." 
It fitted each dear homing thought 

That was of life a part — 
"Annie" was sweetheart, mother, wife, 

With answer for each heart. 

For through the lapse of many wars 

Where Right has battled Wrong, 
The lyric of the Scottish hills 

Has been the soldiers' song. 
They sang it with the " Iron Duke " 

On Waterloo's red plain. 
And waked Crimean echoes up 

With its sweet, haunting strain. 

And when they marched the Af ric sands, 
Outnumbered man to man, 
136 



They sang it, face to face with death, 
With Kitchener in Soudan. 

And so today " the fairest face " 
Comes to the soldiers' dream 

On music of the drifting tune 
Where alhed banners stream. 



OUR THANKS 

(NOVEMBER 28, 1918) 

THANK God! 
Two words ; but, oh, the heart is full, 
The lips shake with their gratitude. 
The eyes swim with the visioned Peace 
And all its grace and magnitude ! 

Thank God ! 

Yea, thank Him ten times o'er 

That He has healed war's awful scar ; 
Thank Him that in the sweet white Peace 
The Victory banners beckon far. 

Thank God! 

Yea, thank Him for the silent guns. 

For safety where our ships may roam ; 
Thank Him for faith of those who f ell— 
And for our boys who're coming home 
Thank God! 

Thank God! 

10 137 



CULPRITS 

("During the first two and a half years of the war our loyal 
women gave 3,000,000 unfathered children to the state," said the 
kaiser.) 

WHO is to blame for this dread war? 
The German wife, the German maid 
Who with servility obeyed 
That word of out-lawed purity 

And humbly lent 
Themselves to " conscript motherhood " 
To please an autocratic lord — 

Those coward women who forgot 
In bestial license God's decree 
For marriage vows and chastity, 
The finer, cleaner things of life — 

And by their acts 
Were concubines to stranger men 

And lost the whiteness of their souls. 

These bear the burden of the blame. 
And on their shameless heads is heaped 
The world's contempt ; they trebly reaped 
In scorn of world-wide womanhood 

What they had sown ; 
For through the ages it will stand 

A nation's scarlet harlotry ! 

And men who know their women went 
Down to such depths of infamy, 
138 



Nor struck a blow for sanctity, 
Nor spoke a word for clean uplift 

Of wife and home ? 
What kind of men are they? The jungle beasts 
Have higher instincts, since they fight 
To hold their mates against the world. 



SHIPS THAT SAIL 

A WIDE and ever swinging path, 
A gleaming trail across the world, 
Calm with the shine of silver light, 

Or wracked by billows, tempest-hurled ; 
And down that swaying, swinging path, 

Uncharted to the far outposts. 
The ships dip through the lilac dawns 
Or slip away like midnight ghosts. 

They're freighted deep with men and stores. 

Each niche is filled by war's decree. 
And yet — ^though we look close and long, 

Not half their cargoes we may see. 
For on them went, with cask and bale. 

Unseen and all so silently, 
The love of those left here behind 

In scattered homes of loyalty. 

No invoice of those " stores " is made. 

But, though its presence none may prove. 

Beside each man that treads the deck 
The shadow of some love doth move. 
139 



O ships that sail that wide highway, 

O pilot at the hehn of fate, 
Hold true your course — come safe to port; 

A thousand hearts go in your freight. 



LE CHEMIN DES DAMES 

THROUGH Picardy, where blossoms blend, 
Through far Champagne, a journey's end, 
It winds away, the ancient road. 
Long, long ago 'twas builded there 
That royal ladies forth might fare 
And journey on a pleasure quest 
To distant court. 

There silken mantels caught the breeze 
Where powdered beauties took their ease 

In gilded coaches satin-lined. 
And cavaliers, all gaily dressed. 
Rode at the side, and song and jest 

Filled every passing wind with joy 
Of life and love. 

Long, long ago ! Now war's hot brand 
Has seared the sweet Picardy land 

And blurred Champagne with blood; 
And up and down " The Ladies' Way " 
The hell-hounds yelp all night and day 

With snarl of bursting shot and shell 
And roar of guns. 

140 



The only silk that flutters free 
Is banner of stern men who see 

Death beckon at each onward curve. 
And where red flowers in phalanx stood 
The crimson now is patriot blood 

Of demi-gods who hold the road 

Against the Hun. 
4^ ^ * * * * * 

And yet, perchance, some moon-white night 
The sentries catch a strange weird sight : 

A phantom company goes past — 
The spectral coach where beauties lean, 
The ghostly gallants all are seen 

As they rode down " The Ladies' Way 
So long, so long agol 



MOTHERS OF MEN 

'npIS said in the forums of nations 

I That peace may dawn any day. 
And wise ones will gather together 

The debt of the Hun to weigh. 
There some may dare whimper of " pity," 

Some whine about " sympathy " then, 
But — outside of that chamber of council 

Are standing the mothers of men. 
The mothers who sorrowed and suff'ered. 

Who went down the depths of despair. 
Who travailed in soul and in body — 

These women are waiting out there. 
141 



They have not forgotten the insults 

Too deep to be framed into speech, 
Nor the homes that were burned down to ashes, 

Nor the things that such cruelties teach. 

They remember, those martyrs of Belgium, 

Those women of France bled white ; 
Oh, they stopped their numb ears, but the crying 

Of loved ones went on through the night ! 
They have prayed till their hearts were blood-sweated, 

They have cursed in their fury of wrong, 
They know, through the fullness of torture, 

Where the guilt and the payment belong. 

They are asking no share in the councils. 

But they wait outside and apart 
And the silence that settles upon them 

Is a silence that clutches the heart ; 
For if Justice should falter or quibble 

When their story of wrong is unfurled, 
The protest they send up to heaven 

Will shake the big heart of the world. 

They trod the hot plowshares of torture. 

Their sons went down to the dust, 
Their cliildren were led through the shaipbles 

To the pagan altars of lust. 
And so when the council shall gather 

To sentence the foemen, then 
'Tis they who will speak in the judgment — 

They, the mothers of men. 
142 



FLEUR-DE-LIS 

IN France there are no white liHes, 
They are stained with blood of her sons, 
Who have answered her cry to her children 
With roar of their Liberty guns. 

Adown the far length of the ages 
Which into the past have flown, 

As white as a pageant of phantoms 
The paschal lilies have blown. 

But France — the land that they symbol, 
Once filled with laughter and dream — 

There, in the reek of the battle 

They have lost their radiant gleam. 

They have bloomed on her unfurled banners, 

Waving defiance to Mars, 
They have signaled from off her high altars. 

Up to the answering stars. 

But — in France are no white lilies, 
They are red with blood of her sons, 

Who have woven her mantle of glory 
With smoke of her Victory guns ! 



143 



MISTLETOE 

RAY — what is the reason for mistletoe ? " 
Said Clarice with the shy, dark eyes 
That gave, ere the gold-tipped lashes fell, 

A vision of Paradise. 
" Was it because some old Norse god — 

Balder I think was his name — 
Was slain by an arrow made of it ? " 
(O red lips, who could blame 
A man's mad thoughts 

Or the things he said 
With the witch-green spray 
Just over her head !) 

" You are right," I answered, calm and grave. 

Though my blood beat time to a song 
" Ere began the twilight of the gods 

Loki wrought Balder this wrong. 
We read the story in old, old books, 

Down the ages the legend slips. 
But the reason to me for mistletoe, 
Clarice, are your rose-leaf lips ! " 
(Ah ! the old Norse god 

Laughed long, I know, 
For I caught her there 
'Neath the mistletoe.) 



144 



WISHING 

IT'S harvest time in country lanes. 
As golden as though Phrygia's king 
Knee-deep had trod that way. 
The bearded grain swings swooningly 

Where hot-breathed zephyrs play. 
Across the fields the reapers move, 

Each scythe a flash of light, 
While from some far-off covert calls 
The mystic-voiced Bob White. 

It's harvest time in the country, 

I hear the sickles' swish, 
And here I sit in the city 

And wish, and wish, and wish 

That- 

It's trouting time in country streams. 

Where, full of rhythmic, running sounds. 

The purling brook slips by 
And wins from mossy rocks a song 

The fish in ambush lie. 
Or else they play at hiding seek 

'Neath lilies white and cool 
Where darts the silent dragon fly 
Above some shadowed pool. 

It's trouting time in the country, 

I hear the splash of fish. 
And here I sit in the city 

And wish, and wish, and wish 

THAT- 
11 145 



LOVE'S GAME 

I HELD her hand- 
In at the window peered a crescent moon, 
From far away there came the mystic rune 

The sea sings to the shore 
In restless monotone of joy or pain — 
That old, old rune whose ceaseless soft refrain 
The primal lovers heard of yore. 

I held her hand^ — 

So close her golden head, like incense rare 

I caught the breath of roses in her hair, 

Of roses red as wine. 
It was a moment fraught with doubt intense 
(For others watched with questioning suspense 

Her yielded hand in mine). 

I held her hand — 

A happy man and proud, for none gainsaid 

The precious preference she thus betrayed 

With subtle, smiling grace. 
I held her hand — at bridge ! She ate an ice 
And whispered o'er my shoulder sage advice : 

" No trumps ; and lead the ace." 



146 



AT THE KIK-U-CHA* 

OF all the sights I e'er beheld 
In haunts of home or lands afar, 
The very sweetest one, I ween, 
Was Kitty at the Kik-u-Cha. 
A miniature Mikado court 

The salon seemed, with light aglow 
And multi-hued chrysanthemums — 
So " Japanesy," don't you know ! 

And Kitty — well, she was divine 
(Celestial, I should rather say). 
With painted brows and hair Japanned 
In quite the Oriental way. 

Her robe was rich with 'broideries 

Wrought all in gold and silver threads ; 
Around its hem long-legged storks 

In solemn conclave showed their heads ; 
A flight of cranes soared up her sash 

To nest, perchance, where on her sleeve 
A group of silken cat-tails spread 
A most phantasmal make-believe. 
Not maid of Tokio herself 
Had worn her robe with more eclat, 
Or flirted with more naivete 
Than Kitty at the Kik-u-Cha. 

Beneath a colored parasol 

She sat and poured her nectared tea — 
• Chrysanthemum Tea. 

147 



This erstwhile fair American, 
This imitation " Japanee." 
Her white hands fluttered here and there 

Among the tea cups on the tray, 
Then hid themselves in her wide sleeves 
In just the most entrancing way. 

I asked to taste her fragrant brew, 
Though tea, I hold, is not for man ; 
She served me, but with drooping lids 
Demure as pagan Puritan. 

But as I handed back the cup 

She sudden lifted up her eyes. 
And, heart athrob, I seemed to stand 

Full in the light of Paradise ! 
To reach her hand I moved so close 
I trod upon her 'broidered storks 
And brushed her cranes, nor stopped to think 
If in " Japan " Dame Grundy talks. 

I know not if that tea were drugged 
With some sweet philter from afar — 
I only know I lost my heart 
To Kitty at the Kik-u-Cha ! 



148 



CAR AND CART 

YOU'VE bought a car, Phil? Well, it's fine 
To skim the smooth asphalt. 
With not a hindrance in your path 

And not a single halt. 
The car seems like a winged bird. 

Your joy is unrepressed, 
Unless, Phil, you are riding with 
The girl you love the best. 

Then staid old Dobbin and a cart 

Seem suited to the case. 
For then she needs no auto veil 

To hide her darling face ; 
Nor do you have to honk a horn 

That sounds so sore distressed ; 
And you can drive with just one hand, 

And — ah, you know the rest ! 

Old Dobbin will jog-trot along, 

His gait both safe and sane. 
And it really doesn't matter much 

If you should drop your rein. 
But in the car you've got to steer. 

Force brakes to do their part. 
And so you haven't time to tell 

The thing that's in your heart. 

A car is splendid with a friend, 
No matter how it "woggles," 
149 



But you can't " look love " at a girl 
When both are wearing goggles. 

Nor can you hold her little hand 
Swathed in a dog-skin glove. 

Oh, an auto isn't in it, Phil, 
When you are making love ! 



A CODICIL TO JUNE 

TIP-TOE upon the distant hills 
It paused to throw us back a rose — 
Sweet June! 
That month of waking ecstacies 
Inwrought with tender memories 
And love's eternal mysteries — 
It takes the world's heart as it goes. 
Such haunting chimes of bridal bells 
It left- 
Scattered through all its roseate length 

So many tender moons ! 
So many smiling jewelers, 
So many salad spoons ! 

We trace its lightly-flying feet 
Where daisies nod and lilies lean — 
Sweet June ! 
Where song-thrush warbled in the shade, 
Where nuptial vows were softly made 
And roses bloom while roses fade. 
And in their wake love came to glean. 
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These are the signs by which we count 
Its steps — 
This month, through which with bated breath, 

Cupid with Hymen slowly walks 
And leaves so many love-hushed hearts — 
So many pickle forks ! 



EVOLUTION OF THE STOCKING 

TIME was when the Christmas stocking 
Was knit from the homespun yarn, 
With here and there a picked-up stitch. 

And here and there a dam. 
And the things that went in the stocking 

In that beautiful long-age 
Were mother's cookies and doughnuts — 
And a dime far down in the toe! 

In time the stocking was cotton 

Straight from the factory's loom, 
And 'twas long and lank and hungry 

As it hung in the Christmas gloom. 
But Santa plumped it with presents. 

Coming far from the land of snow. 
Store candy and wonderful goodies — 

And a quarter down in the toe! 

But now the stocking is silken. 

Flimsy and soft and svelt. 
Too dainty for clumsy gew-gaws 

Or home-made compliment. 
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It hangs by the mistletoed mantel 
'Mid the holly's scarlet glow 

Brimming with costly tokens — 
And a big check down in the toe ! 



MAY-DAY 



(As poets see it.) 

FAR reaches of blue sky that seem 
A sea without a curbing shore 
Or billow's dip ; a white cloud-ship 

That sails and sails forevermore 

To the port of a golden dream. 
A world that holds nor pain nor care ; 
Blossoms and sunshine everywhere. 

Children in happy cavalcade, 
Laughter and song, not a breath too long, 

And a queen in her beauty arrayed. 

II. 

(As it really is.) 

Gray clouds that form a soggy mass 

That drips and ne'er is dry ; 
No voice that sings, but a wind that stings, 

A tired and shivering company 

Wishing the hours would pass. 
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All hope of " clearing up " long spent, 
A brave pretense at merriment 

To hide the crowding woes ; 
Salt by mistake, ants in the cake. 

And a queen who blows her nose. 



MY REFUGE 

THE day has been long and dreary 
With ceaseless patter of rain. 
And the dragging hours have brought me 

Only some heart-ache and pain. 
As I turn my sad face homeward 

The night drops down from above, 
And my heart is yearning, yearning 
For a touch of the arms I love — 

The arms that never have failed me. 

The refuge to which I flee ; 
All day 'mid the j ar of the city 

I dream of them waiting for me. 
Dream of their rest and their welcome 

After a day of dull care — 
Oh, arms outstreched in the gloaming. 

Oh, arms of my EASY CHAIR ! 



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THE PRICE OF PARADISE 

LEGEND says that our first parents 
Eden's joys were forced to leave 
Since with apple red and juicy 
Satan tempted Mother Eve. 

Much I doubt this quaint old story 
Knowing woman's eye for trade, 

Mother of all dainty shoppers 
Better bargain sure had made. 

Something novel 'twould have taken 
Her fastidious taste to suit ; 

What cared she for one small apple 
While the garden blushed with fruit? 

Looking long this Easter morning 
At the bonnets trimmed with lace, 

Noting, too, the smile seraphic 
That illumed each wearer's face — 

Knowing well their love for head-gear. 

Verily I do believe 
'Twas a bonnet, not an apple. 

That the devil gave to Eve! 

Nothing else could tempt her fancy. 
Though the devil's bill to pay, 

Adam had to mortgage Eden 
And move out that very day ! 
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A SOULFUL QUESTION 

** ipwIDST ever," asks the Soulful One, 
I J Uplifting eyes steeped in old dreams 
And mysticism of dead days 
Down which have run the runic themes 
Of ghostly visitants that shun the gaze 
And only walk when day is done 
And haunt the reaches of the clear, wan moon — 

" Didst ever go, 'neath night's close brooding wing. 
Into a room all dark and still 

And know you were alone — no one was there, 
Yet feel within your soul the prescient thrill 
Of unseen presence stir the air — 
Didst ever do this strange, unfathomed thing? 
Oh, answer from thy weird experience!" 

And then we answered : " Yea, when daylight flits 
We've entered such a room and felt 

The ' unseen presence ' ambushed there. 
And barked our shin, and raised a welt. 

And in our fury kicked th' off*ending chair 
Into some several dozen flying bits ! 
Yea, we have done this strange, unfathomed thing.' 



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THE "STUFF" OF DREAMS 

WHAT is the " stuif " of which our dreams are made? 
So sang the poet years ago. 
Come they 
Through opening of a book closed some long while — 
A face glimpsed in a crowd — a smile 
That lit the world one rose-hued mile? 

Are these the forces that our slumbers know, 
These tender glimpses of the past? 
Yea, these ; 
And likewise salmon salad, shrimps and cheese ! 

Whence are they born, those visions that enthrall 
Our senses through the moon-white hours? 
Drift they 

On snatch of song that waked a memory strain 

Of lips that kissed and sang again 

And hands whose touch was rapture's pain? 
Are these the mystic, unseen powers 
That build our dreams from nothingness? 
No doubt : 

And likewise hot tamales and sauer kraut ! 



FORTY DAYS 

SHE'S keeping her Lent quite strictly 
With her suddenly staid little ways ; 
" Get thee behind me, Satan," she cries, 
" And stay there — forty days ! " 
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At church each morn and evening 

She hardly lifts her lashes, 
And, but for the hue, you'd take her rouge 

For sprinkle of penitent ashes. 

She kneels 'neath the stained glass window 
While the organ notes are humming 

And looks like a saint — and wonders if 
Her sackcloth is becoming. 

For sackcloth may be quite lovely 

If only 'tis worn aright 
And even if one is aping the prudes 

One needn't be quite a fright. 

She's keeping her Lent ; 'gainst bonbons 
And dancing she's put up the bar : 

" Get thee behind me, Satan," she cries, 
" But — pray don't get very far." 



WHEN WOMEN VOTED FIRST 

THEY'D won at last — the long-drawn fight. 
Waged without shot or shell or brand 
Was theirs. Above their heads they heard 
The Victory Palms, wind-swayed and sweet. 
Make music for their eager feet 
As though the seraphs came to greet 
Their entrance to the Promise Land 
Of their desires. 
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O brave and bannered hosts of hearts 

That never quailed, 
O wondrous triumph of a faith 

That never failed ! 

And so at last they stood with men 

Sharing with them life's high demands, 
Striving to bear their perfect part. 
And when the strenuous task was done 
And tellers took the garnered toll 
They found of votes a tiny roll ; 
Of recipes and samples such a dole 

They might not count ! 
A laundry bill recited aching woes 

Of days long past, 
And hairpins and mute chewing gum 
Told how that vote was cast. 

And sad the tellers sighed as they threw out 
As chaff from winnowed wheat 

This strange collection. 
" It was a splendid victory," they said, 

"For woman's rights — 
Ah, yes ! Also it was 

A mighty queer election ! " 



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THE SPARKING PLUG 

^'TTJRAY, tell me — what IS a sparking plug?" 
■ Asked the girl with the soft-blue eyes — 

And anybody'd thought that a look like that 
Would have put that young man " wise." 
But he drew on his gloves, and in technical terms — 
The kind that suggest scientifical germs — 
Explained that it was a piece of bent wire 
That passed through an insulated bar, 
When you turned the wheel, it sent word to the " works,' 
And that's how you " started up the car." 

"Oh!" 
But Uncle Jack said, as he shut one eye 

In a dear little, queer little wink 
That turned the cheek of that blue-eyed girl 
The loveliest sea-shell pink 
" That may be true, but when I was young 
And the spring came round and the love-birds sung. 
And I went riding down shady lanes 
With the prettiest girl in the land, 
A * sparking plug ' ? — Huh ? 'twas any old nag 
You could drive with just one hand." 



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